STOP THE WAR

I watched both Jeremy Corbyn and Stewart Hosie on the Marr show today. I thought both of them made perfect sense.

If the United Nations means to tell countries that they can bomb Syria, then they should leave them in no doubt that that is the resolution of organisation's aim.

There was the same sort of situation over the Iraq war with the English Attorney General telling Blair first that the resolution passed DID NOT and then, two days later, DID authorise military action. 

It was never totally clear but with the passage of time it seems to have been agreed that the war was illegal.

If there is no doubt about the intention this time, let us have confirmation in a proper resolution authorising war.

Fallon, on the same programme, gave a performance that was described here by Craig Murray. His interview was a tissue of lies, start to finish and far less plausible than either of the two opposition parties.

The ex-Ambassador to Syria has also rubbished the claims of the government.

War should never be contemplated until every other possibility has been explored and attempted. And even then, it should be remembered that it comes with consequences, and massive expense in terms on people's lives and of course money, which we are told we don't have. Involvement will surely bring retaliation...and why wouldn't it?

As Stewart suggested, why don't we follow the money, and the oil; cut the supply chain, which I would bet we are a part of (we export billions of pounds worth of weapons to Saudi every year, and have done so for a very long time. Until they started slaughtering the population of Yemen recently they seem not have used the weapons...)

Isil doesn't manufacture sophisticated weaponry...what would they do if they couldn't get any more guns; any more ammunition?

War, any war, is indescribably terrible and will always have repercussions. It must be the very very last resort. 

Don't read any further if you have a weak stomach. A couple of these photographs are pretty graphic. But this is what war does.

There are some very big business names that will do nicely from another war.

Send Cameron to fight one to one with the head of Isil?

Amazingly, there are members of the shadow cabinet who want to use this situation to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn.

Who supplies ISIL?
Who's regime is closest to Isil's?
And who supplies them with arms?

It's not unfair or unreasonable that those who want war should go fight it.
Same here. They can line up behind  Cameron.

Of course, few in the PLP give a stuff about what conference for the membership think. That's why they are so angry with Corbyn for asking them.

The ridiculous claims that no civilians would be injured are farcical and insult our intelligence. Have they forgotten that we read Twitter and Facebook?

And what about the refugees we will create as we bomb cities to the ground?

Fallon, Cameron and Benn may not mind having this on their consciences. I do.

You must be ashamed to Hilary, Tony

Even Tory Matthew Parris agrees.

BETTER TOGETHER POOLING AND SHARING JOB LOSSES

They told us that the only way to save jobs in HMRC, was to vote No. (An independent Scotland wouldn't, it seemed, have needed tax collectors???)

Cumbernauld HMRC with Jim, making sure that their jobs were safe.

Indeed, they even managed to get people from HMRC to stand outside with banners proclaiming their jobs were only safe within the pooling and sharing UKOK. Save our UK jobs! Vote NO, they pleaded with us!

You'll maybe find this a little hard to believe, but apparently they lied.

And the irony is that these job losses will be happening in a department that has just been slated by a Commons committee for gross incompetence, and customer services that would make Attila the Hun Enterprises look friendly and magnanimous. 

And why are they so inefficient? Well, because they have too much work and not enough staff.

Fifty per cent of calls to HMRC go unanswered  because there's no one to answer them, and no one seems to be available to deal with the thousands of tax dodgers' names given to them by the HSBC leaker.

You'd have thought that given Gideon is short of cash, that he has to take food our of kids' mouths, he might have though it worthwhile to get his hands on the billions that the super rich have been salting away in Switzerland.

Chris and Stewart with union representatives
outside the Dundee Office

Somewhere between one and two thousand jobs will be lost in Scotland, including the closure of the offices in, yes, you guessed it, Cumbernauld. My home town of Dundee will also suffer substantial job losses.

So maybe Jim, who in fairness lost his own job following the great Pooling and Sharing, and who is now working as a conflict resolution consultant, can pop back from wherever he's creating chaos and disharmony at the moment and explain just how these UK jobs in Cumbernauld were served best by pooling and sharing within the UK. He might try resolving the conflict that he caused by advising these staff members that voting NO would save their jobs.

Good luck with that Spud.

ALL OVER BAR THE VOTING

Estimated Declaration Times

Well, it's all over bar the voting.

Much has been written about melt downs and Labour and the Liberals being obliterated.

I'm cautious. OK, call me a pessimist and a glass half empty man, but I prefer to predict low and be pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around.

Remember any more seats than we have at the moment will be a gain.

At present the SNP has 6 seats in the London parliament. To get 12 would represent a massive success. It would double the representation, and would be one more than they have ever had in London.

Synchronisity  in Anas's ward.
All these people seem to have had the same thoughts, and written the same letter at the same time. Just how completley amazing is that?
Does he have magic powers?

Twenty seats would be a fantastic breakthrough; 30 utterly fabulous.

I'm thinking somewhere between 30 and 35 seats may go SNP.

Any more than that and we are off the scale.

Whatever it is, if it isn't the 59 that some of the press has been predicting, the unionists will call it all a busted flush. Be ready for that and remember that on the day after the election, parties tend to, and have always tended to, big up what little success they have had.

How well we remember, Dave.
Just read it back now and weep for your wickedness.

Just for a little light relief on the last day...

How many seats do you think the SNP will get, realistically?

And...

Of the potential losers, who do you most wish to lose their seat, and why?

Will it be Margaret Curran, for the vitriol she has spewed and for her dogged devotion to right-wing Jim, when only weeks before his election (she voted for him too) she was promising Glasgow Man a lurch to the left; to old Labour and socialism? (Like she remembered what that was!)

Will it be Jim himself? 

The strangest possible choice to lead a party that is begging for a move to the left, is a neo-Liberal, anti-Muslim, white supremacist, enthusiast for war, and lieutenant of the odious Blair. 

Why did they elect him? 

Failure to win his seat would be the ultimate humiliation for the party. Not particularly likely to happen as I'm sure they will have put massive resources into the seat, and will have taken every possible measure to ensure that Jim is back with a decent majority.

Or maybe it will be Cathy. Her record certainly suggests that she is pretty solidly anti Scotland having any powers. Interestingly in a year when most public servants had no pay rise or a pay rise of 1%, she appears to have given her husband a rise of 100%. Nice work if you can get it... and keep it. 

There's a raft of obnoxious Labour MPs who seem to have achieved almost nothing for some of the poorest people in Britain, and Western Europe. Amazingly Willie Bain, the worst of them, is almost guaranteed his seat. 

Just as well, what else could he do?

Remember though, whoever it is you want rid of, THIS is what we are up against. For all their protestations that they want us to stay, there is a strong feeling that we are not welcome in their union.

Who can put up a strong fight for Scotland? Maggie Curran, Cathy Jamieson, Anas Sarwar?

Of course we shouldn't forget the Liberals, although heaven knows, it's easy to do just that. They seem to have adapted remarkably quickly to being Tories. The obvious choice is high flyer Danny Alexander. You may remember that he's not a REAL Tory, just an honorary one.  Alternatively, there is the all but useless Scottish Secretary whose involvement in l'affaire francaise has still not been explained?

Anyway, your thoughts, if you have time on what I know will be a busy day, will be much welcomed.

Fingers crossed. Good luck in all your constituencies.

HUMZA: "We are nobody's branch office. Nobody puts Scotland in a box. No one puts Scotland in a corner."

Is this your first conference?

Depute Leader: Stewart Hosie.

Not bad for a Saturday morning in March.

HUMZA: Welcome to Glasgow. The city with only two seasons: 

taps oan an' taps aff.

Midweek Mélange

It won't stop them trying to blame Thatcher on the SNP, but it's nice to know the truth.

Right. So 105 years later... and the House of Lords is still there!
How's that working out?

Well, you won't be able to until we are independent, but you could help the Labour party fulfil their promise, if a little late...

Bizarre that there are so many Labour MPs decrying this budget, when Ed wouldn't change it at all...

As usual, nail hit firmly on the head.

Don't worry Rachel. We know that you metropolitan lot can't be annoyed with the unemployed.

Lynton Crosby or John McTernan. I get them mixed up.

Somebody tell Jim Murphy that this man existed?

Mark yourselves out of 100.

Poor old posh Ed.

|We know this. They know this. But they cling to the idea that the 'Great' in Great Britain means something other than
simply 'Large' by comparison to Bretagne (Brittany).

So how can this non legal entity be a separate party with its own leader and different patriotic Scottish policies
when it cannot even be sued for wrongful dismissal?

Isn't it funny...?

When will we see Tory Threat...? far far more worrying.

Amazingly, as they feel so strongly about it
they are going to make them illegal.

David Cameron is reported in the Daily Telegraph to have told friends he regards SNP leader Alex Salmond as "bagged, stuffed and mounted on my wall".  Might have been a tad premature.

SNAPS ON SATURDAY

That's why they like to charge for education then?

And no one seems to give a damn.
I wonder why that would be.

Gideon being flattered by someone who wants a seat in the lords?

Hmmmm. Yep, I think I can see that.
No, wait, I can't.

No. It means that he's rich and he either knows the right people,
or possibly where the bodies are buried.

But don't wait for the Daily Mail to tell you this.

Erm, because they weren't ideologically opposed to them?

 Popat seems like a real tight wad.

Bless her. She should probably retire.
She seems not to know what she's doing.

...and I still have it to this day!
We knew how to look after our stuff, and of course,
sticks were better made in my day!

The bosses go to London.

And Jim is telling them that he could play on the right wing

Mrs Thatcher in the forefront and her lackey by her side 

Ed: I said go find us a door to stand in front of with TEN on it, cloth ears

That's because Cameron is a monster.

If only we cared about living as much as we cared about killing

Yes, but the 99% were only little people who didn't matter.
The 1% were our types from Eton and Oxford.

Well, you see...
If you abstain no one can accuse you of having taken sides.
So you keep in with everyone...
and the wages and expenses still keep coming in.
So why bother?

We know you work for Jim the Tory, but the idea is that
you are supposed to keep it a bit quiet.

You can laugh (well, I hope you do).
But (apart from Dean), do you know how to say it in Cantonese?