SNAPS ON SUNDAY... RECENT EVENTS

Surely something wrong there then?

...No. Nothing wrong? Deliberate policy of dickhead councillors?
Or does he just think we pay him to try to be a smartarse?

Absolutely Frankie. I wonder how he feels about it?

But they love us. You got that message, right?

Where on earth did they find this diddy?

One of Dave's mates from Chipping Norton, along with the Brookes and Andy Coolson
 and all these other people currently on trial for hacking phones and getting advice on how
to get round the law from Tory Blur.

This is what we have been saying

And we, unlike the Uk actually care.,

See, told you.

And no matter what that idiot from Inverness says (yeah him that is at the heart of government
 and makes a speech about pensions not knowing that the EU has changed the relevant law)
 we would all be better off if we used the pound. That's why his boss wouldn't answer Ponsonby's questions

I'm thinking that some countries have good government...
and others have the Tories or labour.

Makes a big difference to my life. 

They are the ones with the vested interests in keeping our money in their country.

Real Labour voters know better.

Yes, REAL Labour.

As opposed to people who don't believe in democracy

So watch out for piles of ads coming your way...
 but absolutely no chance of a job. I'd put IDS's name and address.
Maybe he'll get an ad for a hair restorer, or a personality.

I don;t know why he doesn't just get the military and order them to shoot all the poor.
It would save paying Atos... well not Atos any more.
They are ashamed to be associated with the UK government.
There is only so low multi national corporations will sink.

Isn't it nice to see people laughing and enjoying themselves. Even if it's only that lot.

Moral? David Cameron?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...etc

Probably true in his circles. Lords, royals, Blair, Clarkson, Charlie Brookes
Of course they are all better off!

Yep

They probably will, Matt.

Makes sense, Will

Strange that, Iain.

Just the attitude, Jonathan

Suit's me, Alex

So, you're a set of lying bastards? Yes?

Who deny us a voice? Yes!

Towel folder. I bet he even got that wrong.

Exactly.

Oh lordy... It's Lady Lamont.

Just making sure she's not putting her foot in it. After all Annabel and Joke both got there.

Of course you will dear, because you're just as mean and
 miserable and inhuman as the Tories.

Jeeez... I needed that!

The evil old witch at the home office, looking a bit more human for once

...sink hole sink hole sink hole...

DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY THE JOCKS

THE UK Government has been accused of treating Scotland with contempt after it was revealed a radiation leak at a nuclear testing site at Dounreay was kept secret for two years.

Anger erupted at Holyrood after it emerged UK ministers had waited eight months to inform the environmental watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), about the incident.

In a rare show of unity, the SNP and Scottish Labour condemned what was described as a cover-up. Labour said the UK Government had treated people with contempt.
The Scottish Government was briefed about the 2012 incident at the Caithness facility yesterday only hours before Defence Secretary Philip Hammond gave a statement to MPs. It tests the same reactors carried by the UK's fleet of nuclear submarines.

SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson said: "The MoD knew how politically damaging this would be for the UK Government. This smells of a cover-up.
"There are now serious questions to answer. We can only wonder what other nuclear secrets the UK Government is keeping from the people of Scotland."

Glasgow North West Labour MP John Robertson told Mr Hammond: "The stupidity of this Government ... holds no bounds. You are holding the people of this country in contempt."

Mr Hammond insisted the incident posed no risk and was considered a "level 0" on the safety scale, requiring no need to notify authorities.

He said the UK Government informed Sepa, which is responsible for monitoring emissions around Dounreay, about the incident on a confidential basis.

UK Government sources also insisted there was no need to inform Scottish ministers because defence is a matter reserved to Westminster.

The leak emerged yesterday as Mr Hammond announced plans to spend £270 million on the Clyde-based Trident nuclear weapons system as a precaution in the wake of the incident.

Britain's oldest nuclear submarine, HMS Vanguard, will have its reactor refuelled at a cost of £120m. Ministers will then assess the situation to see if all the UK's submarines require work.

The internal leak involved a "miniscule" amount of radiation in a test reactor at Dounreay. The radiation entered the reactor's cooling water, but did not penetrate any further.

Mr Hammond also insisted there was no indication anything had gone wrong on board any of the submarines.

He said the test reactor had been "hammered" and put under intense pressure as part of experiments designed to anticipate what future faults it could develop.

A Ministry of Defence source said the test reactor was "best thought of as around 10 years further down the line than those on the boats".

While only one submarine will be refuelled initially, the entire fleet could need work.

Mr Hammond refused to rule out the possibility the UK could be left without a nuclear deterrent continuously at sea, which would be in breach of the Government's policy

He said: "I'm afraid this is scare­mongering of the worst kind. I have told you, and all the scientific evidence supports the position I have taken, there are no safety issues at stake here."

He added: "'Level 0 events are not routinely made public, they are not routinely reported. That has been the practice of successive governments. That has been the practice across the civil and military nuclear sector."

The test reactor was shut down after the fault was detected. It was restarted in November 2012 and had continued to operate safely since, according to ministers,

It is due to be decommissioned in 2015, but this date could be brought forward if it allowed experts to discover more about the breach.

A Sepa spokesman confirmed it had not told Scottish Government ministers about the leak, despite their oversight role.

He said: "Following an increase of radioactive gases in the Vulcan reactor in 2012, the MoD requested that the issue be kept on a strict need to know basis for security reasons".

I make no comment about this except to say that I wouldn't believe Mr Hammond if he said that London was the capital of England.

THE WAITROSE QUESTION

Guest Post by "Annie"

Do you shop in Waitrose?  

If not, why not?  

If you live in Scotland it could be because you don't have one near you. Even if there was, could you afford to shop there?  

Waitrose is well known as a high-end supermarket where a £50 bag of messages will set you back £50 for the groceries plus £10 for the privilege of shopping in Waitrose.  

There are only 3 in Scotland.  Unsurprisingly they are in the upmarket environs of Edinburgh, Newton Mearns and Stirling (wonder if the people from the Raploch go there).

Now London Labour has taken up the cudgel on behalf of the downtrodden.  In a recent Financial Times article it is reported that the latest salvo against “big business” they have Waitrose in their sights. Their attack is focused on the myWaitrose loyalty scheme which they say is having a bad effect on small coffee shops on the UK’s high streets.  

The scheme allows shoppers with a "myWaitrose" card to have a free daily tea or coffee, even if they don’t buy anything else in the store.  Fair enough you might say.  

But the Labour Party’s view certainly accords with that of Waitrose customers who don't like the scheme because it attracts the “wrong type” of customers.  (This will be why they don't have many shops in Scotland – too many plebs!). 

But wait a minute, is Waitrose not the food retailing arm of John Lewis – an employee owned company and previously hailed by the same Labour Party as the acceptable face of capitalism?  Is it not the sort business “red” Ed wants to encourage in his drive against “big business” – the companies that treat their customers and shareholders with contempt?  

Or it could just be that the high heid yins in the Labour Party, who live most of their lives in London, have suddenly noticed whilst shopping in their local Waitrose that there are all these people there drinking free coffee, and they would rather not rub shoulders with them outwith their constituency surgeries. 

If this is the sort of thing that the Labour Party in Westminster think is worthy of a campaign it is one more reason to think that their view of Scotland, where “The Waitrose Question” does not arise, remains that it is a far off place of which they know little.  

Yet another argument for Scotland being run from Scotland by the Scots.

I wonder what Keir Hardie would think of this storm in a coffee cup and more importantly, would he be shopping at Waitrose? 

PROJECT FEAR AS SEEN BY A BROADCASTER WITHOUT A VESTED INTEREST

Cameron was so sincere there that he had to glance down at his notes to tell us how special the UK was. 

It is certainly true that, by lying about silly things like roaming charges for phones; the end of the postal system; that Doctor Who and Easterners would be a thing of the past; that you'd need to get a visa to see your "foreign" granny in Berwick, if you could get through the barbed wire border; or that we would need to redraw the Treaty of Vereeniging 1902 and 10 million others, they have made people dubious about everything that they say.

It would be ridiculous to imagine that independence will be seamless, but probably to the average person it will appear that way.

You'll still have an (EU) driving licence, although it will probably be issued in Aberdeen (if they let us within the city limits) or Inverness instead of Cardiff, and you'll still have to pay your road tax, although it will be to Edinburgh, not London, that the money will go. But you'll still do it through the bank, or at a post office... and yes, post offices will still exist. Because they manage this kind of thing in other little countries, and we may not be any brighter than the Icelanders or the Irish, but we are also no more stupid.

Afterthought:  I just read that the head of GKN, one of the UKs biggest companies, sways that he isn't in the least worried about Scottish Independence, but does go on to say that Cameron's in/out EU  referendum is causing great uncertainty.

Terrible when things you say come back to bite you on the backside, Dave, isn't it?

YOU SOMETIMES ASK YOURSELF ABOUT THE SANITY OF POLITICIANS

Grant Shapps wants us to believe that the Tories are suffering just as much as
we are. I guess that means that he reckons that there are parts of the country where over 45%
of them are sending their kids to school hungry.

Just how stupid does he think ordinary common people are? Or has he never met any?

Michael Gove, in some people's books a contender for leader of the Tory Party when they ditch the failure they have at the moment, has condemned  Mr Nash, one of his own junior ministers in the House of Lords, as a man who has no experience in education.

Why then, you might be inclined to ask yourself, are we, the taxpayer,  funding his ministerial salary on top of  the £300 a day plus expenses (all tax free) which he's entitled to anyway  (being an aristo) to be a minister at the English Department for Education?

It wouldn't be anything to do with his large donations to the Tories would it?  The thing is, he probably is a waste of space. But here's a wee bit of advice, Michael: don't let on to the public that you are paying him a BIG salary despite the fact that he's useless.

That's like Mr Cameron saying that you are a useless bag of wind. True, but injudicious in the extreme.

There is this thing about wee Willies, if you'll pardon the rather obvious double entendre.  First off there is Willie Hague, a silly little man from Yorkshire pretending to be a statesman, but we all know he wears a baseball cap backwards on his head and had ten pints before lunch when he was nowt but a lad. (This explains much.)  Anyway, he's under the delusion that Mad Vlad has even heard of him, much less gives a toss what he says.

Then there's Willie Rennie, about whom probably the least said the better. Suffice it to say he's even less popular than Ruth Davidson, by quite a long way, and that's no mean feat. I'm scratching my head trying to think of something he's much that was sensible. The sad thing is that, of all the parties, the Liberals are the ones who could distance themselves from what their moronic colleagues in London are doing, but Wee Willie has resolutely backed Clegg all the way... to oblivion.

 And now there's this wee Willie from Aberdeen who seems to have exceeded his authority. He is determined to have the government banned from Aberdeen council property, which is the property of the people of Aberdeen, and not of Wee Willie. His somewhat embarrassed boss says it was a slip of the tongue. He says it wasn't.  I wonder what will happen to him.

SCOTLAND'S CLIMATE IN THE UK

Yes, you heard that right. 47% of children in Glasgow live in poverty, only 25 miles from £100,000,000,000 worth of nuclear weapons whose only purpose appears to be to maintain the likes of Cameron on the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, no matter how inappropriate that membership is.

While children head off to school with empty bellies from cold homes  William Hague appears on television looking desperately serious and what he thinks looks "statesman like"  to tell Vladimir Putin a thing or two. How they must laugh in the Kremlin.

But seriously, what kind of people are we that allow this obscene level of poverty and suffering all the time pretending an importance the last vestage of which disappeared forever 70 years ago?

MR SALMOND IS A BULLY SO HE CAN'T WALK IN OUR PARKS:

IS MR CAMERON WELCOME?

It seems that even though Mr Salmond was cleared of any wrongdoing, yet again, Aberdeen City Council want to make a name for themselves as anti-SNP council.

They are making a bit of a fool of themselves.

In other news Mr Cameron is threatening trade sanctions against Russia, but a briefing paper being carried into Downing Street shows there will be no trade sanctions. Britain's pathetic mess of an economy quite simply cannot afford to reject any trade with anyone anywhere.

The joke is that this man does business with middle eastern royals whose idea of human rights is making sure that the oil is at the right temperature, and the stones are sharp, and the tanks and machine guns that mow down their own people are made in the UK.

Mind you, the number of times that cameras have caught ministers with briefing papers showing that they have been lying their backsides off, both Labour and this other lot... You'd really think the thickos would learn that if they are going to lie, they should put their papers in opaque folders. Duh.

IN MOST COUNTRIES, THE PRESS WOULD BRAG ABOUT THIS...

...WE ARE IN A BETTER STATE THAN GERMANY...

Standard & Poors give Scotland their highest economic assessment. Dispels a few myths, eh? pic.twitter.com/LrpTWe7VBU

In Scotland, however, the press is rather quieter about it. Presumably this is because they don't want you to know. Doesn't fit with their proprietors or editors collecting gongs, seats in Houses of Senility and perhaps a slightly lighter regulation...

I wonder, if ever the Uk managed a better GDP than Germany (snigger, giggle, choke), would they be so reticent. Probably only if there was something in it for them.

WANT TO WATCH SOMEONE STANDING ON THEIR DIGNITY?

This is worth watching. Brian Donohoe, apparently an MWP, despite saying that he wanted to get his message out, objected to the rest of us being allowed to see it. He says it was because he wasn't given the courtesy of being personally asked for permission to film it. 

It appears that his dignity has been wounded. He must feel himself to be a very special person to believe that it was more important that courteousness be shown to him than that more people should get the opportunity to hear the debate.

Oh what great helpings of self regard these little men have. 

He'd be black affronted if he could see us here at Munguin Towers, rolling around the floor laughing at his pomposity and dubious vocabulary.

SNAPS ON SATURDAY

So, there was a debate, and Johann couldn't answer any of the questions

But she had a good excuse. She wasn't genetically programmed

Unfortunately , it seems the rest of us are all thick too

But anyway, the Queen of Germany came to see the Queen of Scots
Unfortunately the poor woman was also obliged to see Cameron

Wings gave itself a month to raise £53,000 and had it done by tea time

British Airways was positive about an independent Scotland saying it
would be good for business, and promptly did himself out a any chance of a K

It wouldn't be UKOK without some bribery and
corruption going down in government.

Bowie, who lives in the USA and Switzerland
sent someone to England to tell Scots not to leave ..
he said "us", so I assume that means the "US A"

Noel (thanks Stu), on the other hand, 
thought it was a good idea.

Sounds like a fine fellow

Oh, and his mate too. A friend of the rusty lady

Well, that says it all. Tories just don't understand us

George Osborne went down well for Labour

This one was just astonished

Absolutely astonished

Not being genetically programmed to do politics,
she must have decided to clean the kitchen.
Mine's needing a good dicht too Jo, if you're free

And the Norwegian Oil fund which brings in £14 billion
a year in interest alone hit Half a trillion pounds in total.
 In 20 years, that's not bad.
Tax take from UK oil is around £7 billion
UK Oil Fund interest £0, because...
...UK oil fund £0 :(
Can't have everything!