SNAPS FOR SATURDAY

Who wouldn't want rid of him forever?

Will we ever know of all the evil  that woman was responsible for?

Watch out, she probably bites... No forget I said that.

Baroness Lamont of Principle Light

Clout clout clout clout clout...CLOT

That way they still get to go to the Lords and get £300 a day

Lord Danny of Unloved

You'll have to write it down for her, so she can read it...
while she's wiping the floor with Eck on a Thursday. Pfffff...

If you can imagine that

Have you ever known a Tory give something away?

Still waiting...

Try to make them ones someone has heard of Dave.
How about that nomark Hopkins? She's always good for a laugh.

U KOK

Even Putin is afraid of them

Simples then...

Still, it's given the SPIV a good laugh...

Who'd have thunk it?

QED

Cute turtle: who's the thick one on the right?

...And devolving health to Scotland!

Not too much to ask, is it?

Oh Lordy, I'd have liked a Margaret Thatcher Day.
What fun we could have had.

Me, I just think he's a wrong'un, but goodness
that Botox works a treat!

Doing a really good job, Osborne. Keep it up mate.

That would do me

Horrid little state

Proper Labour

I'm pretty sure he will go on cutting till only titled people
and Tory MPs can afford to live. 90% of the cuts still to come.

They should just make it into a prison.

It wouldn't matter if the one on the right was called Lying McLiar and his pants were on fire.
 I'd still trust him more than I trust the prat on the left.

The most expensive trains and the worst trains in Western Europe
With the biggest subsidies... Quite an achievement!

Better Together, the most successful economic
and political union in the history of the world for areas 1,2,3 and 4.

Smart by name...erm.... yeah:
 I wonder if he ever sued Stu for calling him a liar...

Captain Beaky's evil influence

They only see the best of him...

So why do they want to cause earthquakes and poison our water... ?
There is, after all, no need. We have all the green energy we need.
Oh yeah, They'll make a lot of money for Westminster and for themselves.
Silly me!

ANOTHER LETTER FROM NICOLA... (AND TRIS)

Click for larger readable version 

PS Mr Hague: 

Given that you seem to think that it is reasonable for you to come to Scotland to deliver a lecture about how you think things might be when Scotland is independent... (and you might remember that your record on forecasting what we will do and how we will do it in this country is far from being faultless) ...perhaps you might like to add some information on how the alternative will work for us.

Mr Hague and the Tories were desperately
anti-devolution, you'll remember

The alternative, of course, being that we remain in the UK, that we continue to be ruled by your party, in your parliament, populated mainly by your countrymen, in your country... and therefore, Mr Hague, something you might be expected to know a little more about.

Because, you see, this is important to us. Not just to our Deputy First Minister, but to us too.

You simply cannot expect people to make a democratically legitimate decision on their future based on a white paper from the Scottish government and a series of scare stories from the UK, most of which have already been discredited by, for example, Nobel prize winning economists, parliamentarians and ministers of other EU countries ... and by common sense.

You must lay out what is likely to be on offer.

I accept that that is not something that you can do for the whole of the British nationalist parties. The White Paper issued by our government is a view of how things could be. It is the view of our current government, and one which could be changed by the Scottish people should they wish to vote for a different government in the future as, at some point, they almost certainly will. (We could try to ask Ms Lamont for a vision of an independent Scotland, but she doesn't have one. Indeed we wonder if she has any vision at all. Of course given her desire to share a platform with Mr Cameron, it is possible that their visions are identical.)

Ms Lamont's vision is...erm...ugh... yeah

So we do not ask you for a definitive vision of how the UK will be after 2016 should the Scottish people remain as part of it. But we can reasonably ask you to lay out is what a UK government under the Tories might be like.

We can, of course, ask Mr Miliband to do the same for a possible Labour government, and even Mr Farage, as he now appears to have a very considerable influence on English politics.

Ms Sturgeon's letter isn't a political stunt. Any thinking person wants to know what your vision for Britain is, so we can look at it in concert with that of Mr Miliband (we already know that Labour would devolve health to Edinburgh ...presumably having first taken it back to London) and compare them both with the vision we already have of  Scotland as painted by Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond.

Please do give it some thought.

Regards

Tris

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Stuart has taken some of Hague's speech to pieces here. 

As always with Wings' stuff, it is worth a read.

IF YOU'VE NO PLANS FOR TOMORROW MORNING...

...and you live in the Glasgow area... then I know a place where you can go...

It's absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Englishmen. It's for Scots to decide. That's why Dave the Spiv is absolutely set against debating with Alex Salmond... It's simply NOT HIS BUSINESS.

That's maybe why he's sending that well known Scotsman Wee Willie Hague, another failed Tory leader, to Glasgow to lecture us in his superior English way. 

Presumably we will be told about the hundreds of thousands of embassies and consulates that litter every corner of the globe, and which are there just to serve you when you are abroad (as long as you have a title). Scotland couldn't afford one in every country in the world.

Don't forget; wherever Wee Willie goes,
the wicked old puppet mistress is always pulling the strings

Probably he'll throw in another warning about the EU throwing Scotland out and Nato refusing to even talk to us, not being on the UN Security Council and no one in the world wanting to do business with us, or indeed even recognising us as a country.

There's bound to be a piece about how much clout we won't have.

It will almost certainly be a load of bollocks.

So, if you're in Glasgow and you've nothing much else to do, go and welcome the wee soul. As a Tory he'll feel a bit lonely otherwise and Glasgows a frightening place if you are all alone.

Just one thing though... unless you want to see the wee soul cry, don't ask him about Robert Gates' speech...

ROBERT SEEMS TO BE CLOSING THE GATES ON SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

I was amused to hear the interview with the ex Secretary for Defense in America, Robert Gates, telling UKOK that he was disappointed with it for its cuts in military spending. Mind you in fairness he said that he was disappointed in the cuts in military spending in the USA too.

He said that UKOK could always be relied upon to be the US’s stooge, erm partner, in whatever it felt it had to do around the world, but recent cuts meant that it was no longer an all-rounder and was therefore letting the US down.

He was particularly concerned that for the first time since the Great War, UKOK didn’t have an aircraft carrier (although I thought that they had some sort of agreement with the French to borrow one of theirs). He felt too that UKOK should keep its weapons of mass destruction.

 

I can see his concern. If you’ve been used to being able to send a set of foreigners to do your dirty work, at their expense and at their government’s unpopularity, and all you had to do was agree that your president would be seen smiling at, or with his arm around, the client state’s first minister, then it must come as a bit of a shock, especially in these hard times, when that service is no longer available to you.

Mr Gates pointed out that the special relationship would be likely to be damaged by these cuts. So touching! A deep friendship entirely reliant upon UKOK punching way above its weight and doing as it is bid.

I don’t know if Mr Gates has taken into consideration the fact that UKOK’s ministry of warfare is having a hell of a job recruiting people.  Massive recruitment programmes are ongoing at the moment, at the same time as the MoD is paying off people 3 days before their pension becomes mature (leaving them in redundancy with a part paid pension plan). So not only is there a shortage of ships, but there is a shortage of personnel too.

The MoD recently had to write off £6.7 million on an online recruitment scheme and has admitted that it is costing the taxpayer £1 million a month to pay for staff to fill in while new software is sourced…

It’s not that long ago since the long-faced millionaire Hammond, said that an independent Scotland would not be able to recruit anyone for its armed forces, because they would be small, pathetic, and only good for Chinese tourists to snap pictures of, standing outside Edinburgh Castle.

Hammond, it seems, is another failure of a minister who comes to Scotland and blows off about something he knows nothing about and then goes back to his own place to make even more of a mess.

Strangely, there was no one from the MoD, least of all Hammond himself, available for comment this morning for the Today programme. However (and you’ll love this) the department did issue a statement saying that UKOK still had the fourth largest  military spend in the world, and after the USA (of course) its troops continue to be the best trained and the best equipped in the entire universe.

Tell that to the lads who had to buy their own kit, share body armour, and use their own mobile phones for communication.

PAT ON THE BACK FOR SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT... FROM THE DAILY RECORD!

It's not that often that I feel the need to share an editorial column from the Labour supporting and Britnat "Daily Record", but I feel this is one our government can be proud of.

When the opposition press is praising you, you have indeed done well.

Fergus Ewing

THE true test of any civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable members and by that yardstick yesterday was a very good day for Scotland.

Two announcements by the SNP Government showed an enlightened and caring attitude to people that need it most.

First, Enterprise Minister Fergus Ewing revealed disabled workers thrown on the scrapheap by the closure of Remploy factories would be given a new lease of life with another company.

Hours later, Veterans Minister Keith Brown outlined plans to create a veterans commissioner to fight the corner of ex-servicemen and women as they adjust to civilian life.

Keith Brown

Both moves should be warmly welcomed by anyone with a shred of decency.

The public were rightly outraged when the UK Government cruelly condemned hundreds of disabled Scots to the dole queue when they axed Remploy factories.

Now Scottish Government support means 26 workers who were made redundant have been given new jobs with a textile factory who will supply nurses’ uniforms for the NHS.

This is exactly how public contracts should be used – in the way that best benefits society as a whole.

The setting up of a veterans’ commission is also a far-sighted move that ensures those who have risked their lives for their country overseas are not abandoned when they return home.

Brown, a former Royal Marine, gained inspiration for the move on a recent trip to Canada, where a similar post has been successfully operating for some time.

It is an important step in improving the support provided to ex-servicemen and women who often face serious challenges getting jobs, houses and medical support.

It will take more than one appointment to stop discrimination on civvy street against our former troops. But it is a good start.

Together these announcements send a powerful message that Scotland is still a place that looks after its own.

I feel particularly strongly about the closing of Remploy factories by a government which insisted that their reason for persecuting sick and disabled people was that it was good for them to be forced into work (or rather, given the economic realities, lose benefits). 

It was, they said, nothing to do with saving money. It was everything to do with making the lives of people with disabilities better.

They seemed unable to come up with an explanation then for saving money by closing these factories which they said were running at a loss, thereby throwing people, who have even greater difficulties than the majority of us getting work, on the dole. 

The utter hypocrisy of their morally repugnant actions was deplorable, particularly as much of the work done in these factories was relocated abroad! What happened to British jobs for British workers?

Esther McVile (especially posed for John Brownlie)

Still, with IDS and Esther Mcvey in charge, what would you expect other than moral repugnance?

There is a limit to the amount of money the Scottish government has at present to spend on these matters. They have already spent a very considerable amount trying to alleviate the worst excesses of other DWP policies. 

Let's hope soon that the likes of these two will have no more say in the looking after of our most vulnerable people.

**********

Thanks to Cynical Highlander for pointing me in the direction of this video, also from the "Daily Record". I've not always been a fan of Jim Sillars, but he's talking a lot of sense here.