If you enjoyed the "Great Glen Way", you'll like this too. I could read this guy's stuff all night. He never fails to make me laugh with his crisp dry humour and self deprecating style. It's only £2.03, and for a brilliant cause.
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| Dear Lynton...such an asset |
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| ...to cigarette companies |
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| Nah...you must have it wrong. Alistair says its nearly finished... and he knows all about being nearly finished |
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| Except you'd have Ed's irritating voice instead of Eton Boy's |
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| Oh well...locust are nice deep fried...they say |
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| Make up your mind Alistair. Hmmm "mind" |
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| As we have always said |
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| And that's not all you got away with, is it? |
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| Generous George, everything' a bargain... not! |
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| Ain't it true? |
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| That explains a lot of the dodgy arithmetic |
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| Westminster's priorities are...Westminster |
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| You can't help wishing they would, as the Fench say "accorder leurs violins" |
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| BE THERE... |
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| ...OR BE SQUARE! |
Sorry I'm going O/T so early in this thread Tris but thought you'd enjoy this.
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.govteen.com/countdown-forum/370615-lockerbie-bomber-release-linked-arms-deal-according-secret-letter.html
Apparently, a certain Mr Blair and his entourage LIED through their collective earse whenever they were questioned about any links between the release of Abdul Bassett al Megraghi and Libyan oil. Now who on earth would have ever thought THAT was possible!
Fancy that nice Mr Brown and that nice Mr Blair being lying sacks of crap. Who'd have thought it?
DeleteBut, that was only the prisoner transfer agreement. And that never happened. I'm not sure why, but possibly because they had no jurisdiction over OUR prisoners.
In the end as we know that guy was released on compassionate grounds and their prisoner transfer agreement was a waste of paper and all the kisses and cuddles that Tony expended on Gaddafi> So there's another wonder. British Foreign Office wastes piles of money...
I wouldn't worry about going off topic Arbroath. I know some folk can be a bit precious about that... I'm not one of them.
Make yourself at home here and if you have something that needs saying... carry on. :)
Oops I forgot to add the link to the Sunday Telegraph.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10206659/Lockerbie-bomber-release-linked-to-arms-deal-according-to-secret-letter.html
Who's a silly Billy lol:-)
The Telegraph is wrong there. They may have done a deal, but he wasn't released on the prisoner transfer scheme negotiated by the UK government, but on Scots Law overseen by our government.
DeleteSo Blair/Brown et al were liars. They had done oil deals, but as it turned out the scheme was never used.
About Englands phenomenal whisky exports - are there any further links?
ReplyDeleteI took that from (I think) YES Scotland's Facebook page. I don't see any further information on it Douglas, sorry.
DeleteTry Google... I will too later when I have some time.
Douglas:
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=494814450596567&set=a.136650206412995.35100.136640179747331&type=1&theater
I found the link that I got the pic at. There are a lot of comments... There may be some more information there.
The reason so much is attributed to England is simply that the companies are registered there. Not exactly rocket science. Post #Indy the companies will need to register in Scotland. Unless of course they stop producing Scotch? I can see the headlines already, "In an Independent Scotland there won't be any whisky!".
DeleteNo. Not rocket science Anon. Just irritating and misleading about our economy.
DeleteI can imagine the headline though. Darling is sure to trot it out sometime in the next few weeks.
tris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link, butit descends into name calling and worse. I am just astonished that England is even allowed to have distileries, what with it being supposed to be a protected product an' all. I have been to England and I don't recall one distillery, but apparently there must be dozens of them....
I was just wondering if all Scottish exports that have to pass through England before re-export are treated in a similarly cavalier fashion. Given our fairly poor international links I'd imagine that almost all our exports could be attributed to their port of exit from the UK, hence the pretence.
How that is treated in GERS, etc is something worth investigating.
Yes it is.
DeleteThe head office of so many organisations is in london of the southeast...
So is every penny you spend in Morrisons or Tesco or Asda, for example, treated as English income?
It's all so muddled.
There is one in East Anglia making English Whisky as there is in Wales making the Welsh one. There was a plan to establish one in the Cumbrian national park but I am not sure how far it has progressed.
DeleteThey are all mini distilleries in the context of Glenmprangie etc. More like the Isle of Arran one which is as much a tourist venue.
Thanks snotty. It's not something I've ever seen on sale, although I've seen Welsh whisky.
DeleteEngland is more cider and beer to me, but I can't see any good reason why they couldn't make whisky.
Anyway, most of the whisky being sold from the Uk is Scotch, but it seems to be attributable to England because it leaves the union there.
We must do something about upping our ports!
Yes, it gets worse when you look at the internal economy. Currently a lot of services I receive and pay for will be attributed to a Head Office outside Scotland. I but quite a lot of my messages from Morrisons in Glasgow. If the profit they make from that is allocated to their head office, then so is the taxation. (OK that is probably naive, big players rarely pay tax, tax is for little people.) But the principle is that the accounts are settled outwith our country. Untangling that would be a mammoth exercise I think.
ReplyDeleteWhich was why I thought that our exports might be a bit easier. Not so.
Farmed salmon are, to the best of my knowledge, mainly bred in Scotland. Are they also allocated to their port of exit? I seem to recall that Alex Salmond did a deal with the Chinese a while back and the exports to China went through the roof. Huge boost to Scottish rural economy headlines and (perhaps) not acknowledged as such in the numbers that ought to be informing the referendum debate.
(There might be political issues there, I think the Chinese fell out with the Norwegians or summat.)
Do any reputable folk look into these sorts of issues?
plus, all the tax that WE pay (income tax and Vat) leaves the country and goes to London, where the Treasury may use it for other parts of the UK.
DeleteIt should stay in Edinburgh to be recycled here.
The Chinese were annoyed with Norway because the gave the Nobel Prize to the Dalai Lama, so Scotland got the salmon contract!
Oops, I seem to have uncovered ANOTHER wee beauty of an article Tris.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/john-prescott-its-time-sink-2096704
I wonder how our dear dear friends Messrs Cameron,Clegg,Milliband,Lamont,Davidson,Rennie and the intelligencia at Better Together HQ are taking this earthquake of a statement from good old two Jags. lol:-)
Ha ha ha ha ha . Now he's got his seat on the red benches (it was all for Pauline, you know), he can say what he like and there's not a lot they can do.
DeleteOf course he's right. The Russians don't need nukes to ruin the UK. They just stop the gas!
wasn't sure whether to post this here or in IDS article but according to Private Eye
ReplyDelete- Disabled people who have been unfairly denied benefits thanks to dubious Atos assessments have been given a new way of delaying that trip to the food bank – if they’re lucky. Those who fill out a questionnaire about their experience with Atos are being entered into a prize draw for £100 worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers. Cold comfort if the winner has been denied employment and support allowance in spite of a genuine disability. But then this is not just insensitivity, this is Atos insensitivity…
Speechless, PP!
DeleteJust when you think that they couldn't get any more repulsive, they manage to surprise you.
Is that the infamous T Kelly next to the double six pack, last pic?
ReplyDeleteNone other...CH
DeleteI felt the bog needed some glamour...
good play on words there. They say a picture paints a thousand............... and in this case right.
DeleteI did like the oil poster further up.
LOL Marcia. A thousand....
DeleteI suspect that there is a great future for oil. One that will see us build our fund. It will never be anything like the Norway one, but it will stand us in good stead.
In the meantime, I don't think anyone seriously thinks that we are basing our economy on oil alone.
Even if it doesn't ever run out, it will become obsolete as we find new ways of creating the energy we need with less damage to the environment and less dependence on unstable parts of the world.
Only idiots would base the long term economy on something as short term as finite fossils. Surely Darling doesn't think that we are that stupid?
Thanks for the mention Tris, always appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI think my favourite pic has to the one about Scotch Whisky exports, its the best example of Scottish GDP being attributed elsewhere skewing the figures - a bit like Scottish sports personalities - Scotland's resources being usurped by the bastard creation that is team GB to be used by a government we didn't vote for.
Why does anybody anywhere think this is equitable?
Happy to d my little bit Pa.
DeleteNot that the readership here is enormous, and probably people who read this already read your blog. But the book is good (I've started) and I couldn't be more positive about the work that people like you do with youngsters.
Nothing about an unequal union is equitable. The very fact that we have to send our whisky to England to have it exported is unfair.
The only way that anyone can see it is fair is if they think of the UK as one country. It's not.
I wonder how people like Farrage would think if England's exports of... whatever they export, were largely attributed to France because they passe through France on their way to Spain or Italy.