We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
If you had written "Britain" instead of "the UK", I would have asked how your second statement is supposed to support your first. Many people who actually have the relevant identities see both Britain and Scotland as being countries, and that's what makes them so. There's no rule against countries being composed of other countries.
But...you wrote UK. The UK is not a country. It is the currently existing political regime in Britain. If the monarchy were to be abolished, Britain would not stop being Britain. Similarly if the French monarchy were reinstalled France would not stop being France, but of course the Fifth Republic would be no more. The UK is an entity of the same kind as the French Fifth Republic.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
You have the advantage of actually living in said country, as opposed to the ex pat who can’t bear to live there.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
There's a Scotch one, there's a FM, there's plenty of foreign countries sharing our Sovereign, what about radio Luxembourg?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
Quite obviously, that is why the universe is so big, so that somewhere it would all come good.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Wise words from Racheal Clarke on the Battersby case. Families should discuss these issues before they happen, just in case. Obviously makes sense for older rather than younger family.
"Better yet, before that next case comes, why not explore with your family – including your children – their views on life support in the event of severe brain damage? That way, you can advocate on their behalf with confidence. It is our job to engender trust, to communicate with clarity – and to listen."
I don't think we'll get "runaway" climate change - I suspect temperature increases will max out at 2.2-2.3C above pre-industrial levels aroundbout 2045-2050.
Admittedly that's twice as bad as we currently have it - and depends on China, India, Brazil, Russia and the USA all doing some heavy lifting - but it's not making the earth uninhabitable and consumed by fire.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
Just checking, is 51.3% of the vote a majority or not?
Yes, in its various releases up to 4. Requires quite a bit of time, and the economic rules are primitive, but the politics are fun, as is the military micromangement. Are you asking because you're contemplating getting it, or...?
Me too. You need a week off and a pizza delivery on speed dial, just to learn it. But it’s quite immersive once you get the hang of all the things you are supposed to be attending to. There are some good tutorial videos and play throughs on YouTube, but you need a weekend off just to study all those.
The AI play isn’t the best so once you surmount the learning curve you can usually win starting as any of the main nations
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
You have peddled that falsehood several times on this board, and @Carnyx , among others, has repeatedly corrected you. Yet you persist.
Besides, in a parliamentary democracy it is parliamentary arithmetic which decides the outcome of general elections, not raw voter numbers. Otherwise, no government in London ever had a majority (saving the grand coalitions).
And the government is supposed to care what this superannuated old fuck says about Scotland.... why?
I 100% guarantee that in the event of Indy ref II you’ll be hanging on every Union luvvin word that superannuated old fuck says about Scotland.
If the Union is going to rely on James Gordon bloody Brown to save itself, then the Union is doomed. Happily, there won't be an indyref until the 2030s, I suspect, by which time Brown will surely have taken the hint and retired entirely to spend more time with his jowls
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
There's a rather good UK sci-fi film from the early 60s called 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' set in London which features the temperature going through the roof (I won't spoil the reasons). Very well done and an excellent turn from Leo McKern.
Yes, the Daily Express print room features in it back when the Express was a decent paper.
Some of the science is a bit dubious and I'm NOT suggesting anything like that.
I'm merely arguing that in the absence of widespread air conditioning, those who can may well move north to a more comfortable existence in northern England and indeed Scotland and if I wanted a long-term investment, I'd buy up land and property on the northern Scottish coast and in the islands.
It's not easy to get to Scrabster or that coastline now as @Sunil_Prasannan will confirm but that could well change if there was a real expansion of tourism.
Yeah - the science is 'a little' iffy - but I can forgive it for the dialogue. And yes, the scenes in The Express are excellent. Especially the resigned 'All stop!' passing down 10 lines of foremen to the printing press and the big sign just saying 'IMPACT!' in the newsroom.
But it does come to mind when I wonder what happens if this changes much, much faster than we thought. Not necessarily out of control - but to a new unpleasant steady state. I can certainly imagine a new line of thinking about MP's working in parliament while the refurbishment is going on. Might suddenly seem like a *terribly* good idea to show the flag up in Aberdeen or Orkney...
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
Oh, he could just do a few more photo-op's 'showing the red card' to various people and he'd be happy enough. That's what politics is about really. When you think about it. A certain way.
One of the biggest strategic weaknesses for Scottish Tories is idleness. They have no purpose, no function, no policies and no prospect of power. The absolute apex of their ambitions would be propping up a Labour or Liberal Democrat first minister. Hardly stuff to motivate, focus and discipline the troops. The longer it goes since they last won an election, in the 1950s, the worse the problem becomes.
Without the compliant media they’d have been finished long ago. As we witness the break up of old media patterns there is a big worry for Ross & Co.
I often think there is a place for an old-school style 'patriarchal' Tory party in Scotland. Just the kind of 'look after the local fishmonger', 'make sure mum can afford her shopping' kinda thing. But they seem as rudderless as ever - not sure if they're 'let the market rip' or 'down with this sort of thing' conservatives.
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 6h Fun watching Truss & Sunak refloat every single idea for university 'reform' that's ever sunk without trace. But it doesn't change reality. As with their tax plans, they'll be forced to do the opposite of what they say: stump up more cash or watch the whole thing fall apart.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
Just checking, is 51.3% of the vote a majority or not?
Which vote was that, and how did you arrive at that figure?
2021 Scottish GE:
constituency vote 47.70 SNP 1.29 Green 0.00 Alba total 48.99
regional vote 40.34 SNP 8.12 Green 1.66 Alba total 50.12
total % for SNP, Green, Alba of all votes cast: ~49.6%.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Yes you will.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
Wise words from Racheal Clarke on the Battersby case. Families should discuss these issues before they happen, just in case. Obviously makes sense for older rather than younger family.
"Better yet, before that next case comes, why not explore with your family – including your children – their views on life support in the event of severe brain damage? That way, you can advocate on their behalf with confidence. It is our job to engender trust, to communicate with clarity – and to listen."
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Are you trying to troll the Welsh? Principalities and monarchies aren't anachronisms?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Nobody is seriously advocating that. Nobody is doing that. Tory Scumbags in my area are *Scottish* Tory scumbags. Voted for by Scottish people.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
The science, as we know it at present, seems to suggest that we can still limit the rise to 1.5 degrees and avoid runaway climate change, but it's getting more difficult all the time. Biden's bill looks as though it's passing, which is good news for the climate although could have been better. Let's hope that the Congress elections in November and the Presidential in 2024 are good for the Democrats. Here the Tory contenders for PM seem worse than Boris, who at least paid lip service to the subject.
!.5 degrees is also now almost impossible. Even 2 degrees is extremely difficult and would require immediate and large scale action of the kind that appears to be politically unfeasible.
Disappointing - since quibbles on the detail aside the world’s response to Covid showed how we can act in our collective best interest in response to an emergency.
Necessity is the mother of invention has far more going for it than most chestnuts, so it must be with Climate Change that too many people still don't truly feel the necessity. They need their own house to catch fire and until it does will carry on with their soft or hard denial.
Hard denial being either it isn't happening or it's not caused by us. Soft denial being stuff like "technology will fix it" or "the models are iffy" or "ok it's likely happening but totally exaggerated" bla bla.
‘Technology will fix it’ is not ‘soft denial’. It is probably our best and maybe only hope
I mean, "chill, no big changes to make here or price to pay here, technology will fix it" - this is soft denial.
But of course technology is key.
Since it's fundamentally a by-product of energy production & consumption the solution is absolutely technology driven.
The alternative is to go back to the situation pre-1780, which would mean a far smaller human population, primitive medicine, infant deaths, disease, failed harvests, and shorter and brutal lifespans - just as it did then.
"Vice President Harris broke the tie, and the bill has cleared the Senate. Democratic staff in the galleries and on the floor joined senators in raucous applause."
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
Westminster is located in England last time I looked.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
There's a Scotch one, there's a FM, there's plenty of foreign countries sharing our Sovereign, what about radio Luxembourg?
Is the United States a country?
Fuck knows. Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
The first Labour administration in Redbridge in 1994 proposed to close the hall and sell it off, simply through spite as the Tories had closed facilities in their end of the Borough; as a minority administration they didn’t have the votes and gifted the LibDems holding the balance the chance to save it from closure.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
Westminster is located in England last time I looked.
Westminster is the UK Parliament not the English one
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
Westminster is located in England last time I looked.
Westminster is the UK Parliament not the English one
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Belgium is in reality a country with its own parliament, army, monarch and courts even if it shares its currency with most of the rest of the EU
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Shared law, language, tax. Scotland a bit of an outlier on all tests.
Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
There's a Scotch one, there's a FM, there's plenty of foreign countries sharing our Sovereign, what about radio Luxembourg?
Is the United States a country?
Fuck knows. Parliament? Prime minister? Sovereign? National TV broadcaster?
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
The first Labour administration in Redbridge in 1994 proposed to close the hall and sell it off, simply through spite as the Tories had closed facilities in their end of the Borough; as a minority administration they didn’t have the votes and gifted the LibDems holding the balance the chance to save it from closure.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Belgium is in reality a country with its own parliament, army, monarch and courts even if it shares its currency with most of the rest of the EU
Belgium is a state. Comprised of two nations. The *state* has those things you list because that is its function. It is not a country/nation.
The same with the UK of GB and NI. If the compound name for our state isn't enough of a clue for you, nothing will be. That you deny England exists is stunning - you really are a Welsh Nationalist!
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
Just checking, is 51.3% of the vote a majority or not?
Which vote was that, and how did you arrive at that figure?
2021 Scottish GE:
constituency vote 47.70 SNP 1.29 Green 0.00 Alba total 48.99
regional vote 40.34 SNP 8.12 Green 1.66 Alba total 50.12
total % for SNP, Green, Alba of all votes cast: ~49.6%.
You’re a diddy so consider this the last bit of time I’ll waste on you.
‘A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.’
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
The first Labour administration in Redbridge in 1994 proposed to close the hall and sell it off, simply through spite as the Tories had closed facilities in their end of the Borough; as a minority administration they didn’t have the votes and gifted the LibDems holding the balance the chance to save it from closure.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Belgium is in reality a country with its own parliament, army, monarch and courts even if it shares its currency with most of the rest of the EU
Belgium is a state. Comprised of two nations. The *state* has those things you list because that is its function. It is not a country/nation.
The same with the UK of GB and NI. If the compound name for our state isn't enough of a clue for you, nothing will be. That you deny England exists is stunning - you really are a Welsh Nationalist!
Rubbish, even Texas is more of a country than England, for starters it has its own legislature and governor. England has neither a parliament nor executive, nor Supreme Court, nor currency, nor army.
Texas was also an independent Republic in the 19th century, England has not been an independent nation since the Middle Ages
Yes. I found it overly complicated and so went back to turn based games like Empire Total War and Civilisation 6.
I've heard it's amazing if you can get your head round all of it though.
It is. Although it can be frustrating - the research trees for better weapons, vehicles, planes, ships and industry is very immersive and choosing what to go for next feels important, but despite churning out ever better kit it never makes much obvious difference to the game play, reason being that all the other nations are researching and improving their stuff at broadly similar speeds so you’re really doing all that work just to stand still, and maybe getting a slight edge in one field at the expense of lagging a little in another. And even when your new generation fighter is invented, you’ve still got to produce them and slowly replace your old planes, which takes months and months. Which is all very realistic, but as a game it does make the research aspect feel rather futile (although if you don’t do it, you get slaughtered obvs).
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Belgium is in reality a country with its own parliament, army, monarch and courts even if it shares its currency with most of the rest of the EU
Belgium is a state. Comprised of two nations. The *state* has those things you list because that is its function. It is not a country/nation.
The same with the UK of GB and NI. If the compound name for our state isn't enough of a clue for you, nothing will be. That you deny England exists is stunning - you really are a Welsh Nationalist!
Rubbish, even Texas is more of a country than England, for starters it has its own legislature and governor. England has neither a parliament nor executive, nor Supreme Court, nor currency, nor army
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
I prefer the Richard Osman view on this:
"By country we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the U.N. in its own right."
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And the wife of an Earl is a Countess.
I think someone said on here a bit ago, and I hope it is true, that the Normans rebadged counts as earls because the indigenous peasantry thought count was a fnaaar sort of word which sounded almost exactly like...
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Yes you will.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
See?
Just so you can get it right in future, Buckie is the caffeine enhanced tonic wine, Buckies are winkles in the rain drenched hellhole.
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
The first Labour administration in Redbridge in 1994 proposed to close the hall and sell it off, simply through spite as the Tories had closed facilities in their end of the Borough; as a minority administration they didn’t have the votes and gifted the LibDems holding the balance the chance to save it from closure.
Now 58 Labour 5 Tories.
They all voted for Boris, they reaped what they sowed.
Although the long-term change is almost all demographics
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
Country/nation Is distinct from sovereign state. Often they are one and the same But not always.
I am defining country as distinct from state, you are not. The USA is a nation state because it is not multi-national. Canada IS a multinational state because its parliament recognises Quebec as a nation.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
I prefer the Richard Osman view on this:
"By country we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the U.N. in its own right."
Yes, if you want to align country and state as the same, as opposed to country and nation being the same. So on that definition it is correct, and England / Scotland etc are distinct nations.
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
Country/nation Is distinct from sovereign state. Often they are one and the same But not always.
I am defining country as distinct from state, you are not. The USA is a nation state because it is not multi-national. Canada IS a multinational state because its parliament recognises Quebec as a nation.
It’s getting a bit close to angels on the head of a pin though?
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
The UK is a sovereign country. I am English but England is not in reality a country, just a region of the UK. England has no currency, no parliament, no supreme court, no army it is not a sovereign country
A painful ignorant misunderstand of your own country's history and denial of both its own status and unique history. And you call yourself a patriot.
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
Belgium is in reality a country with its own parliament, army, monarch and courts even if it shares its currency with most of the rest of the EU
Belgium is a state. Comprised of two nations. The *state* has those things you list because that is its function. It is not a country/nation.
The same with the UK of GB and NI. If the compound name for our state isn't enough of a clue for you, nothing will be. That you deny England exists is stunning - you really are a Welsh Nationalist!
Rubbish, even Texas is more of a country than England, for starters it has its own legislature and governor. England has neither a parliament nor executive, nor Supreme Court, nor currency, nor army.
Texas was also an independent Republic in the 19th century, England has not been an independent nation since the Middle Ages
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
Country/nation Is distinct from sovereign state. Often they are one and the same But not always.
I am defining country as distinct from state, you are not. The USA is a nation state because it is not multi-national. Canada IS a multinational state because its parliament recognises Quebec as a nation.
Living standards today are double what they were in 1980. People had enough money for food and energy in 1980. Discuss.
Lots more things considered essential that were not present in 1980? Such as mobile phones, much more widespread car owning (are most couples two car owners? Certainly more than in 1980, I’d expect). Greater expectation of foreign holidays?
Scotland is a country. England is a country. Wales is a Principality. NornIron is an anachronism. Combine them together and you get a multinational state - the United Kingdom. The UK is not a country.
Dictionary definitions do not agree with you. The U.K. is a country. It competes as such at the Olympics. It has one political leader. One seat at the UN. It is a country.
No, it is a sovereign state. Belgium also has one seat at the UN but that is also not a country. As for sport, FIFA accept the home nations as separate countries.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
A foreign dictionary. So what?
So I think you are being too prescriptive on your definition. Belgium is clearly a country, as is the U.K. That both have smaller components doesn’t detract from that. I assume you feel that the USA is not a country either?
Country/nation Is distinct from sovereign state. Often they are one and the same But not always.
I am defining country as distinct from state, you are not. The USA is a nation state because it is not multi-national. Canada IS a multinational state because its parliament recognises Quebec as a nation.
"There will be either Russian land or a scorched desert."
Russian terrorists are already directly declaring that they are ready to "honorably carry out the toughest order" if there is one, and are ready for the consequences. They openly say that they have mined the entire Zaporozhye nuclear power plant."
As you say, intriguing thought. I may be being unkind to him, but I suspect my friend from Epping would have been in the honourable peace camp, that being the policy of a significant part of the Conservative party!
To be fair, I might well have been following the far left line, which would've meant I'd had to had to do a severe reverse ferret a few months later!
I'm less certain - @HYUFD would have lived in Churchill's constituency - he was MP for Epping from 1924 to 1945.
Boundary changes moved Churchill to the new Woodford seat in 1945 and Epping was won by Labour. The Conservatives re-captured it in 1950 but lost it again in 1964 when Stan Newens became MP. Newens lost in 1970 in a straight fight with a new Conservative candidate - one Norman Tebbit.
The Epping constituency was then abolished in 1974.
IIRC Winston Churchill came under serious pressure from local Tory establishment in Epping in aftermath of Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Agreement and WSC's denunciation thereof.
Which was relieved but hardly eliminated when Churchill joined Chamberlain govt as First Lord of Admiralty in September 1939.
Indeed, he faced several no confidence votes by the local association, and the Tory party chairman of the time had to twist arms and do whatever other dark arts were necessary to deliver the vote. The community hall in Woodford green is still named after the guy.
The Sir James Hawkey Hall. The first time I saw it, I misread Sir as Sid, and was left wondering what a Hawkey Hall might be.
The first Labour administration in Redbridge in 1994 proposed to close the hall and sell it off, simply through spite as the Tories had closed facilities in their end of the Borough; as a minority administration they didn’t have the votes and gifted the LibDems holding the balance the chance to save it from closure.
Now 58 Labour 5 Tories.
They all voted for Boris, they reaped what they sowed.
Although the long-term change is almost all demographics
Indeed, both Ilford seats were won by Labour even under Cameron in 2015 before Brexit. They make up the majority of Redbridge Council wards
Living standards today are double what they were in 1980. People had enough money for food and energy in 1980. Discuss.
That's a really excellent question.
With a BIG caveat - just a few years before the world was mired in an energy crisis caused by energy exporters shutting supplies off to the West. Because domestic electricity and gas suppliers were owned by the government, they were to able to insulate consumers to a significant extent. But it was an absolute disaster for manufacturers, and domestic inflation went the roof.
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
Yes. I found it overly complicated and so went back to turn based games like Empire Total War and Civilisation 6.
I've heard it's amazing if you can get your head round all of it though.
My son (12) just came back from camp, and made a new friend. Said friend is obsessed with Hearts of Iron, and I am under a lot of pressure to purchase it on Steam.
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
Fyi the fertility rate is Total Fertility Rate, so isn't influenced by the age-profile of the population. So it's even worse. Scotland has few young people, and those people aren't having many babies.
"Vice President Harris broke the tie, and the bill has cleared the Senate. Democratic staff in the galleries and on the floor joined senators in raucous applause."
NY Times live blog
Now the Bill just needs to clear Biden.
There has to be a serious chance he vetoes it, right?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Yes you will.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
See?
Just so you can get it right in future, Buckie is the caffeine enhanced tonic wine, Buckies are winkles in the rain drenched hellhole.
Thanks
That was merely a literary exercise, I hope you realise
Living standards today are double what they were in 1980. People had enough money for food and energy in 1980. Discuss.
The average household will find 2022 energy costs painful but feasible.
It will mean finding an extra £2000-£3000 over a year.
Yes, for most people that will be doable but unpleasant; very many people have that much discrecionary spend or rainy day savings easily accessible. Even then, the knockon effects of where that money isn't spent won't be pretty.
So the first question is how many people simply won't have access to that money? The next (somewhat uglier) one is whether the wider public is prepared to pay up to bail out the really needy and not demand that they are helped as well? The signs there don't look brilliant.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And the wife of an Earl is a Countess.
I think someone said on here a bit ago, and I hope it is true, that the Normans rebadged counts as earls because the indigenous peasantry thought count was a fnaaar sort of word which sounded almost exactly like...
The Normans would not have used a Saxo-Danish word. The ordinary people did. That's what's survived.
Just as we have cows, pigs and sheep, derived from the Saxon, and beef (beouf) pork (porcer) and mutton (mouton) for the meat. When it was outdoors in the freezing rain and covered in - mud - it was Saxon. When it was being eaten before a nice warm fire with a good sauce, it was Norman.
So we have Earls and Counties.
And incidentally the wives of Saxons did not carry titles - hence the wives of Earls are countesses. Because people heard and used the French word Comtesse.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And the wife of an Earl is a Countess.
I think someone said on here a bit ago, and I hope it is true, that the Normans rebadged counts as earls because the indigenous peasantry thought count was a fnaaar sort of word which sounded almost exactly like...
The Normans would not have used a Saxo-Danish word. The ordinary people did. That's what's survived.
Just as we have cows, pigs and sheep, derived from the Saxon, and beef (beouf) pork (porcer) and mutton (mouton) for the meat. When it was outdoors in the freezing rain and covered in - mud - it was Saxon. When it was being eaten before a nice warm fire with a good sauce, it was Norman.
So we have Earls and Counties.
And incidentally the wives of Saxons did not carry titles - hence the wives of Earls are countesses. Because people heard and used the French word Comtesse.
But eorl is AS shirley, and not outside and muddy?
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Yes you will.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
See?
Just so you can get it right in future, Buckie is the caffeine enhanced tonic wine, Buckies are winkles in the rain drenched hellhole.
Thanks
That was merely a literary exercise, I hope you realise
Sure. I just thought the idea of druggies swilling mugs of small chewy molluscs blunted the denigration a bit.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And the wife of an Earl is a Countess.
I think someone said on here a bit ago, and I hope it is true, that the Normans rebadged counts as earls because the indigenous peasantry thought count was a fnaaar sort of word which sounded almost exactly like...
The Normans would not have used a Saxo-Danish word. The ordinary people did. That's what's survived.
Just as we have cows, pigs and sheep, derived from the Saxon, and beef (beouf) pork (porcer) and mutton (mouton) for the meat. When it was outdoors in the freezing rain and covered in - mud - it was Saxon. When it was being eaten before a nice warm fire with a good sauce, it was Norman.
So we have Earls and Counties.
And incidentally the wives of Saxons did not carry titles - hence the wives of Earls are countesses. Because people heard and used the French word Comtesse.
But eorl is AS shirley, and not outside and muddy?
Yes. They called counts eorl or jarl, which jumbles up as earl.
So that word is used for the equivalent of a count. Because that is what most people called it. It's instructive the same logic didn't apply in France. Stephen was for example Count of Blois, never the Earl of Blois.
And wee Union Jacks on insulation. That’ll do the trick.
Does a Union Jack not give you a warm glow all of its own Stuart?
Only if decent accelerant is applied.
Jesting aside, I have a surprisingly high tolerance level for the Butcher’s Apron, for a despicable, seditious Jock. For example, it is liberally displayed on 2 of our cars. I gave up frowning about them after a few years. I even quite like them on occasion. When I drive like an arsehole fellow motorists just blame ‘engelsmannen’.
I've never liked the Union flag. It's not an ideological thing, I just think it's unattractive. I don't like the colour combination, it's too busy, and it's not even symmetric. It's just an ugly flag. Like our ugly, tuneless dirge of a national anthem. Why are our totems of nationhood so rubbish?
I agree our flag is so ugly. Like so much else poisonous in this country it is because of political correctness. When we absorbed Scotland and Ireland we had to pretend it was a partnership so we included their flags in our flag. So the beautiful simple English flag was corrupted. However it is well known so we seem to be stuck with it.
Nothing is forever. You English are sovereign and can choose independence whenever you like. We Scots are Untermenschen and do not share your privileges.
You (I.e. the people of Scotland) had the choice in 2014. They chose 'no.'
That you can't accept the result is sad, but also your problem, not the Natsy fantasy you have just peddled.
I did accept the result, and congratulated my Unionist friends and family on their victory. (Funnily enough I never hear a peep from them about their finest hour these days: they’re all deeply ashamed.)
Then The Vow lies started to unravel, culminating in Brexit. The SNP and Greens presented the electorate with our proposals to counter London’s breach of faith, and the electorate agreed with us.
I respect the will of the electorate: they voted for a fresh referendum and a fresh referendum they will get.
No they didn't. A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.
But I agree with you that the Vow was a bunch of lies. There has been no serious effort by the government of the Union to strengthen the Union and make it a popular, happy, forward-looking thing. Sending Michael Gove to Glasgow doesn't count.
As for the Scottish Greens, they are a bunch of creeps who shouldn't be allowed to take Short money as an "opposition" party while they support the SNP government to the hilt, indeed even on paper in the form of what they pretentiously call the "Bute House Agreement".
You have peddled that falsehood several times on this board, and @Carnyx , among others, has repeatedly corrected you. Yet you persist.
Besides, in a parliamentary democracy it is parliamentary arithmetic which decides the outcome of general elections, not raw voter numbers. Otherwise, no government in London ever had a majority (saving the grand coalitions).
Don't remember correcting Dynamo - unless this is a new incarnation of an older poster. But the words in bold are wrong, anyway.
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Can I refer you to our own government's policy on migration. Far from "mass plantation of settlers" - English or otherwise - its says this:
"Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive nation and we value everyone, no matter where they were born, who has chosen to make Scotland their home; to live, work, study, raise their families and build their lives here."
This government - with this policy - won a 4th term in office. So Scots voted for people like me to cross the border and become Scottish - to live and work and integrate in Scotland, to "build our lives here".
So blow your anti-migration rhetoric up your Malmo.
I’m not anti-migration. I’m anti Brit Nat agitators advocating the mass migration of English Tories to Scotland for the express purpose of rigging election results.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
Yes you will.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
See?
Just so you can get it right in future, Buckie is the caffeine enhanced tonic wine, Buckies are winkles in the rain drenched hellhole.
Thanks
That was merely a literary exercise, I hope you realise
Sure. I just thought the idea of druggies swilling mugs of small chewy molluscs blunted the denigration a bit.
Or large ones, depending on where one is - in some airts buckies are whelks. Not that they taste any better IMO.
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
An independent Scotland could be quite appealing to rUK youngsters wanting to move to an English speaking country with the advantages of EU membership.
Yes. I found it overly complicated and so went back to turn based games like Empire Total War and Civilisation 6.
I've heard it's amazing if you can get your head round all of it though.
My son (12) just came back from camp, and made a new friend. Said friend is obsessed with Hearts of Iron, and I am under a lot of pressure to purchase it on Steam.
I find it to be a dull game pushing units around a map, and barely got past an hour. However, a child may well find it interesting, and indeed it has a very large user base. The problem with those Paradox games is that, all in with the downloadable content, they can cost a bomb - I think they target a very online audience with a thing about completionism and collections.
Okay. I fear the nations of the world are not going to collaborate to arrest or reverse climate change(**). But thinking about it, we in the 1st world have for centuries pretty well used the poorer nations at will. So let us "1st worlders" take on an attempt to use technology to try a fix. For instance, can we make machines to capture and sequester Co2 somewhere safe? 24/7/365 ? At our expense? We can invent to technology to chop up an al Qaeda leader from afar, so why not something a bit more sane?
(**) Speaking of Mankind's mulishness, how could on define war? Somewhere in a continuum from "War Between the Tates" and thermonuclear Armageddon. Having decided on a definition has there ever been a time in the last thousand years (say) when there has been universal peace?
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
An independent Scotland could be quite appealing to rUK youngsters wanting to move to an English speaking country with the advantages of EU membership.
Rather assumes EU membership. What would be the entry requirements? Would Scotland be forced into the euro? Would it meet economic criteria?
Living standards today are double what they were in 1980. People had enough money for food and energy in 1980. Discuss.
Lots more things considered essential that were not present in 1980? Such as mobile phones, much more widespread car owning (are most couples two car owners? Certainly more than in 1980, I’d expect). Greater expectation of foreign holidays?
The mobey is pretty much vital for getting the dole, dealing with the unemployment rules (eg appointments for supervision), etc.
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
The trouble is, as soon as they got to iScotland, these new migrants would all move south to England, where the weather is better and the people are friendlier and the towns more exuberant and, also, London
So it would never work, unless you put a VERY hard border along Hadrian's Wall (and this would also likely be the end of the CTA with Ireland) and make movement between Scotland and rUK extremely difficult. Do Scots want that? I don't believe they do
We're all gonna have to move to fucking Scotland. Ugh
Just what TeamRoss needs: more right-wing nut jobs driving away the remaining Scots Tory voters.
If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too
Adding violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing to your list of hobbies. Why am I not surprised?
Says the New Swede.
I do not advocate the mass infiltration of a Swedish political party and subsequent take over of the country by foreign fifth columnists. But then I’m not a Franco adherent or tank commander like FUDHY.
Scotland isn't a foreign country and the English aren't foreigners to Scots. As 55% of Scots confirmed in 2014 we are all one sovereign United Kingdom
That wasn’t on the ballot paper, and none of the Unionist campaigners argued that during the referendum. Quite the opposite: they argued that we would have a Union of Equals.
Scots did not vote for the abolition of their country and the mass plantation of English settlers until we were a minority in our own land.
If that is how you interpret the 2014 result you are an even bigger fool than you appear.
Scots voted to stay in the same sovereign country with England with freedom of movement to England and from England to Scotland.
If large numbers of English people decide to move to Scotland because of a cooler climate and lower cost of living they are free to do so entirely in accordance with the 2014 result
The UK is not a country, it is a union of three countries and part of a fourth one.
You wrote: “If enough Tories moved from England to Scotland they would soon be the majority of Scots Tories and in time the largest proportion of Scottish voters too.”
You are not a benevolent bystander. You are an agitator actively working against the interests of the Scottish nation. To such an extent that you want to see us eradicated.
How do you define a country? Pretty much every definition would work for the U.K.
Well,
An empire is ruled by an emperor.
A kingdom is ruled by a king.
A sheikdom is ruled by a sheik.
An emirate is ruled by an emir.
Who rules a country?
A count I imagine originally.
Counts ruled counties, not countries.
One of my strongest memories of the late Thatcher years, when she really had gone barking mad, was her saying that England ought to abolish the name “county” as the country had never had counts.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
She was wrong as well. England did have counts. It just derived the name for them from the Saxon eolderman and Danish jarl rather than the French comte. Hence why earls were originally associated mostly with counties (the French derivation of comte) while actually in colloquial English the word 'shire' (hence 'sheriff') remained popular as the word for them until very recently and indeed is still attached to the name of all bar a dozen or so ancient counties.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
And the wife of an Earl is a Countess.
I think someone said on here a bit ago, and I hope it is true, that the Normans rebadged counts as earls because the indigenous peasantry thought count was a fnaaar sort of word which sounded almost exactly like...
The Normans would not have used a Saxo-Danish word. The ordinary people did. That's what's survived.
Just as we have cows, pigs and sheep, derived from the Saxon, and beef (beouf) pork (porcer) and mutton (mouton) for the meat. When it was outdoors in the freezing rain and covered in - mud - it was Saxon. When it was being eaten before a nice warm fire with a good sauce, it was Norman.
So we have Earls and Counties.
And incidentally the wives of Saxons did not carry titles - hence the wives of Earls are countesses. Because people heard and used the French word Comtesse.
Much of this, of course, introduced to generations of children in Scott's Ivanhoe.
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
The trouble is, as soon as they got to iScotland, these new migrants would all move south to England, where the weather is better and the people are friendlier and the towns more exuberant and, also, London
So it would never work, unless you put a VERY hard border long Hadrian's Wall (and this would also likely be the end of the CTA with Ireland) and make movement between Scotland and rUK extremely difficult. Do Scots want that? I don't believe they do
@StuartDickson you touch on an interesting point on migration. Scotland would need to at least double net migration to make up for our low fertility rate (even lower than the UK generally), depending on what migration projection you go for.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
The trouble is, as soon as they got to iScotland, these new migrants would all move south to England, where the weather is better and the people are friendlier and the towns more exuberant and, also, London
So it would never work, unless you put a VERY hard border long Hadrian's Wall (and this would also likely be the end of the CTA with Ireland) and make movement between Scotland and rUK extremely difficult. Do Scots want that? I don't believe they do
Slight logic fail there. England is not the only border.
It would be the only land border on the island of Great Britain. To stop New Scots coming south there would have to be a hard border
This is presuming iScotland manages to attract a million new migrants. What is going to stop them going south to richer, kinder, sunnier southern England? Who wants to stay in Wick when you can go to Wimbledon?
Comments
But...you wrote UK. The UK is not a country. It is the currently existing political regime in Britain. If the monarchy were to be abolished, Britain would not stop being Britain. Similarly if the French monarchy were reinstalled France would not stop being France, but of course the Fifth Republic would be no more. The UK is an entity of the same kind as the French Fifth Republic.
I’m a migrant myself, and very proud of the fact. I have gone to great lengths to integrate into Swedish society, as most Scots migrants have done down the centuries.
I love Scotland and the Scots, including New Scots. I will not see my country denigrated by Tory scumbags.
"Better yet, before that next case comes, why not explore with your family – including your children – their views on life support in the event of severe brain damage? That way, you can advocate on their behalf with confidence. It is our job to engender trust, to communicate with clarity – and to listen."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/07/archie-battersbee-doctors-withdrawal-of-treatment?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Admittedly that's twice as bad as we currently have it - and depends on China, India, Brazil, Russia and the USA all doing some heavy lifting - but it's not making the earth uninhabitable and consumed by fire.
The AI play isn’t the best so once you surmount the learning curve you can usually win starting as any of the main nations
Besides, in a parliamentary democracy it is parliamentary arithmetic which decides the outcome of general elections, not raw voter numbers. Otherwise, no government in London ever had a majority (saving the grand coalitions).
Glen O'Hara
@gsoh31
·
6h
Fun watching Truss & Sunak refloat every single idea for university 'reform' that's ever sunk without trace. But it doesn't change reality. As with their tax plans, they'll be forced to do the opposite of what they say: stump up more cash or watch the whole thing fall apart.
https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1556262819838005248
I've heard it's amazing if you can get your head round all of it though.
2021 Scottish GE:
constituency vote
47.70 SNP
1.29 Green
0.00 Alba
total 48.99
regional vote
40.34 SNP
8.12 Green
1.66 Alba
total 50.12
total % for SNP, Green, Alba of all votes cast: ~49.6%.
It's a rain drenched hellhole full of Buckies swilling druggie dole moles, so utterly dire that even somewhere as shite as Sweden would feel like a blessed haven and refuge by comparison.
See?
Nobody is doing that.
Tory Scumbags in my area are *Scottish* Tory scumbags. Voted for by Scottish people.
She did have a valid point - the names “shire” or “sherrifdom” have much better pedigree and longevity - but you couldn’t help getting the strong impression that everyone thought she was nuts.
The alternative is to go back to the situation pre-1780, which would mean a far smaller human population, primitive medicine, infant deaths, disease, failed harvests, and shorter and brutal lifespans - just as it did then.
NY Times live blog
There is a difference between a country and a sovereign state. They very often cover the same thing, but in many cases they do not. Belgium is similarly a sovereign state and not a country.
The VP broke the tie as all GOP senators voted against it.
The GOP also voted against capping insulin costs for those not on Medicare . They continue to work against the interests of the American people.
Many nations exist which are not sovereign. England. Navajo. Kurd. Its hardly an unknown.
Quite clearly the U.K. fits the definition of a country, see 2b.
I love the confusion of how many places are referred to as 'the county of Xshire' or 'the shire/county of Y' as a result. It's a very English compromise.
The same with the UK of GB and NI. If the compound name for our state isn't enough of a clue for you, nothing will be. That you deny England exists is stunning - you really are a Welsh Nationalist!
‘A majority voted for Unionist candidates, as in every Scotland-wide election there has ever been, whether for Westminster or Holyrood.’
Texas was also an independent Republic in the 19th century, England has not been an independent nation since the Middle Ages
"By country we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the U.N. in its own right."
Although the long-term change is almost all demographics
Is distinct from sovereign state.
Often they are one and the same
But not always.
I am defining country as distinct from state, you are not. The USA is a nation state because it is not multi-national. Canada IS a multinational state because its parliament recognises Quebec as a nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federally_recognized_tribes_in_the_United_States
"There will be either Russian land or a scorched desert."
Russian terrorists are already directly declaring that they are ready to "honorably carry out the toughest order" if there is one, and are ready for the consequences. They openly say that they have mined the entire Zaporozhye nuclear power plant."
https://twitter.com/JaziraNews3/status/1556361457696182275?s=20&t=JfBM6Lom7iLSQd07Woa8Vg
With a BIG caveat - just a few years before the world was mired in an energy crisis caused by energy exporters shutting supplies off to the West. Because domestic electricity and gas suppliers were owned by the government, they were to able to insulate consumers to a significant extent. But it was an absolute disaster for manufacturers, and domestic inflation went the roof.
This is a valid argument for indy, imo. Open the borders! The problem with this is is about 2/3td of current net migration is from rUK, so you'd probably cut that to an extent (though this tends to be much older than international migration, so might not be a bad thing for health spending etc).
The other problem is that in period with open borders, Scotland just didn't really see that much immigration. How do you attract people?
There has to be a serious chance he vetoes it, right?
That was merely a literary exercise, I hope you realise
Yes, for most people that will be doable but unpleasant; very many people have that much discrecionary spend or rainy day savings easily accessible. Even then, the knockon effects of where that money isn't spent won't be pretty.
So the first question is how many people simply won't have access to that money? The next (somewhat uglier) one is whether the wider public is prepared to pay up to bail out the really needy and not demand that they are helped as well? The signs there don't look brilliant.
Just as we have cows, pigs and sheep, derived from the Saxon, and beef (beouf) pork (porcer) and mutton (mouton) for the meat. When it was outdoors in the freezing rain and covered in - mud - it was Saxon. When it was being eaten before a nice warm fire with a good sauce, it was Norman.
So we have Earls and Counties.
And incidentally the wives of Saxons did not carry titles - hence the wives of Earls are countesses. Because people heard and used the French word Comtesse.
Incidentally, what do you think of the Drunken Lobster in Ventnor? Is it a good place to take Mrs Foxy for an anniversary?
I just thought the idea of druggies swilling mugs of small chewy molluscs blunted the denigration a bit.
So that word is used for the equivalent of a count. Because that is what most people called it. It's instructive the same logic didn't apply in France. Stephen was for example Count of Blois, never the Earl of Blois.
It is shamelessly manipulative: the rain, the music, but I confess it worked on me
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1556031793920413697?s=20&t=JfBM6Lom7iLSQd07Woa8Vg
(**) Speaking of Mankind's mulishness, how could on define war? Somewhere in a continuum from "War Between the Tates" and thermonuclear Armageddon. Having decided on a definition has there ever been a time in the last thousand years (say) when there has been universal peace?
So it would never work, unless you put a VERY hard border along Hadrian's Wall (and this would also likely be the end of the CTA with Ireland) and make movement between Scotland and rUK extremely difficult. Do Scots want that? I don't believe they do
https://www.ft.com/content/f76534bf-b501-4cbf-9a46-80be9feb670c
(Copy and paste via Google to sidestep the paywall)
This is presuming iScotland manages to attract a million new migrants. What is going to stop them going south to richer, kinder, sunnier southern England? Who wants to stay in Wick when you can go to Wimbledon?