Scareforce One Makes Day Trip To Aberdeen

Apologies Bonny.  I mean the others have and not RT and AJ.

Knew what you meant, Lily.   

They are actually getting worse.

That's the thing, Lily. It's very difficult to sort out truth from propaganda, so if AJ and RT are honestly reporting something I do know about....then it's reasonable to assume they are more or less honestly reporting other matters.

I seem to recall those days when we could also trust most other newspapers.......

From:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699792/Failure-stand-Putin-threaten-Britain-s-economy-says-Osborne-warning-Russia-holds-key-MH17-crash-site.html

Invoking the outbreak of World War Two, the Prime Minister said Europe must not forget the 'consequences of turning a blind eye when big countries bully smaller countries'

Oh, the irony....

Scotland will be left without any weapons to defend itself if it votes for independence and refuses to take on its share of UK debt, an MP has warned.
Ian Davidson, the chairman of the influential Scottish affairs committee, said that Alex Salmond’s ‘cavalier’ plan to renege on Scotland’s debts if he does not get his way on the pound would ‘poison’ negotiations with the UK.
He warned that Scotland would be denied access to military equipment and could be left with ‘a navy with no ships, an air force with no planes and an army with no guns’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2723402/Go-Scotland-defenceless-Nation-left-without-weapons-votes-independence-refuses-share-UK-debt-MP-warns.html#ixzz3AGPMv8Xn
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

As long as Trident is the first to go, I doubt if anyone greatly cares.

If anyone is interested in a realistic view of current events in Scotland, as opposed to scaremongering, spinning and outright lying:

http://wingsoverscotland.com/

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/australian-pm-indy-scotland-would-not-be-in-worlds-best-interests.1408170886

Australian PM: indy Scotland would not be in world's best interests
Saturday 16 August 2014
An independent Scotland would not be in the best interests of the international community, Australia's prime minister has warned.

Tony Abbott, elected the Commonwealth country's 28th prime minister last year, became the latest international leader to wade into the debate after US president Barack Obama said his administration had a "deep interest" in ensuring the United Kingdom remained united.

Mr Abbott, who spent two years at the University of Oxford, told the Times: "What the Scots do is a matter for the Scots and not for a moment do I presume to tell Scottish voters which way they should vote.

"But as a friend of Britain, as an observer from afar, it's hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland.

"I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom, and that the countries that would cheer at the prospect of the break-up with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep."

The Yes campaign believes the nation would be strengthened by independence but the UK government is opposed to the breakaway.

A Yes Scotland spokesman said: "Independence seems to be working well for Australia.

"These comments have echoes of Lord George Robertson's "forces of darkness" speech in April which was widely ridiculed, even by No supporters, as one of the anti-independence campaign's most outlandish scare stories.

"The decision about Scotland's future is one for the people of Scotland to make - a point that even David Cameron asserts. After a Yes vote, Scotland will take her place as a normal and valued member of the international community - just as Australia did when she gained independence at the turn of the century."

A spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond said: "Tony Abbott has a reputation for gaffes, but his bewildering comments have all the hallmarks of one of the Westminster Government's international briefings against Scotland.

"Seventy-one nations and territories were represented at the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow but only Mr Abbott has put his foot in it. Many Australians, including the great number with close Scottish connections, will look on in bafflement at these remarks - Australia is a country that has gained its independence from Westminster and has never looked back.

"Scotland's referendum is a model of democracy, which has been cited as such internationally, including by the US Secretary of State. An independent Scotland will be a beacon for fairness, justice and cooperation in the international community - and a great friend of Australia."

If there's one person in the world it has NOTHING to do with it's the PM of Australia. Anyway, I thought he'd declared war on Russia, or something?      

Cheers, though....

"I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom, and that the countries that would cheer at the prospect of the break-up with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep."

That insult looks like being good for a few more YES votes.   

Unbelievable. Bonny, I agree with you. The no crowd do seem desperate and a person wonders why.   

The Oh noes! are a humourless lot, Lily. I don't bother watching much about it on TV, or in the press, because with one or two honourable exceptions, the bilge appearing in most of the media bears little resemblance to reality.

Are they worrying that that might mean they have to provide more cash for bailouts of other countries and things if Scotland detaches itself?
Or would that not count?

They're worried about everything it's possible to be worried about, Lily. A lot of the panic is because us leaving will be the final nail in the coffin of the British Empire.

Ah....gotcha. So the sun will have set and disappeared from view?

That's it, Lily - just look at the way Cameron postures internationally, trying to pretend that the UK is still a superpower.

I wondered why there was always so much desperation showing and now know why.

Oops!

https://www.facebook.com/YesScotland



SCOTLAND’S oil and gas revenues could be up to six times higher than those forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), according to an independent report - #indyref

Scotland's Oil & Gas revenue could be worth £365bn by 2040 compared to OBRs forecast of 57bn.

No wonder they don't want you guys going your own way.....

There are lots of rumours floating around that there's been an ENORMOUS oil discovery west of Shetland, Lily, on top of the fields in that report. Just rumours, though, nothing substantial.

And no, we don't want 'helped' by Kerry, thank you very much.

I think that the Scots have far more smarts than that, Bonny.

  

It's down to the wire now, Lily, and I am not going to forecast anything - the 'opinion polls' bear no resemblance to what is happening on the ground.

This is quite a good piece:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/the-no-camp-is-losing-out-in-this-carnival-of-democracy.25102521

The No camp is losing out in this carnival of democracy

Ian Bell
Columnist
Saturday 23 August 2014
If you had the good fortune to be Blair McDougall, director of Better Together, what kind of referendum campaign would you really like to run?

If the choice was yours alone, free and without impediment, how would you put across your deeply felt message?

As things stand, Mr McDougall isn't short of backing. The Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are with him. Every last department of the British Government is on his side. Foreign politicians, whether admired Americans or unpleasant Australians, stand ready to lend a hand.

The print media don't cause Mr McDougall distress. On the Union, the London press are unequivocally as one. Here, only the Sunday Herald has declared for Yes. The broadcasters, north and south, cause no loss of slumber in the Better Together camp.

The business community are, by and large, keen on a No vote. The worst friendly bankers can manage is a pledge of no interference while reporting, dutifully, that independence looks awfully risky. Mr McDougall also has the support of those he might not invite to a cheese-and-wine do: Ukip, the Grand Orange Order, George Galloway... As to endorsements, the campaign director is spoiled for choice. So-called celebrities arrive in hosts. Comedians, soap stars, pop singers, sports types: Britons who can really make you think are Mr McDougall's, it seems, to command. He has it all. Apart, that is, from the reviews.

It has become a truism. Yesterday, Yes announced that better than one million have signed a declaration for independence. Those allied to Better Together duly mocked the effort, pointing out that it has taken 30 months to gather signatories and call in The Proclaimers. But would Mr McDougall have turned up his nose at one million names for No? The question is hypothetical: he doesn't have the option.

Yes, the world knows, has all the best tunes. It has the best jokes, the best slogans, the best speeches. Of Scots, it has the best writers, historians, actors, lawyers, painters, doctors, farmers, politicians, constitutional theorists, political thinkers, and more. It has a buzz, a sense of commitment and belief, a work rate. Above all, it has a grassroots campaign that Better Together, wedded to cynicism and a template from a box stamped "Quebec", cannot match.

I would say that. Full disclosure isn't required. I "declared for independence" before some of those who've signed the Yes Declaration were born, but that's no big deal. Had this been an argument over the hopes of the SNP, I would still be noting differences with Alex Salmond and his party. It isn't like that.

Yes has been a sight - several thousand sights - to see. It has been a campaign without precedent in these islands. It has been infused with an optimism and a belief that ought to bounce from my calloused hide like most of the "inspirational" noise summoned up by paid campaign directors. The reality, as Mr McDougall knows perfectly well, is different.

For the most part, Yes groups are self-directed and self-organising. They are, if you like, self-determined. Regiments of reporters from London or beyond, trooping around the village halls, witnessing an electorate determined to be informed and involved, have vouched for that. Those reporters, too, have seen nothing like it. They wonder over the phenomenon. Can politics still be done in this way? Isn't this just the converted preaching to the converted? Who's in charge? How can it be that Nicola Sturgeon or Jim Sillars pull crowds in and find that the crowds, persuaded or unpersuaded, noisy or polite, are deeply attentive?

Enthusiasm alone doesn't win a vote. All concerned understand that Scotland's majority remains silent. There is the tantalising knowledge that three-quarters of a million potential voters, give or take, call themselves undecided. A mass of people who have never voted or registered to vote are an unknown quantity. You can stage a fine carnival of democracy, but a lot of folk don't enjoy that kind of show. If they don't turn up, you know nothing about them.

A popular movement permeates a society; a manufactured campaign buys software, consultants and "volunteers" as required. The campaign planted on astroturf feeds on received wisdom. So when the Radical Independence group stages a couple of mass canvass events, with 600 people in the field, the professional campaigners dismiss evidence of a big Yes vote in working-class areas. That's what professionals do, after all.

What is also missed is the ability to get 600 people to give up their time to go door to door. It's a conspicuous effort, but within the Yes campaign it is not treated as the kind of effort requiring a subsidy from a handful of rich Tory donors. That, though they would not advertise the fact, is one of Better Together's problems.

Another difficulty is plain. Building a campaign around the word No isn't the best way to engender sunny optimism. If Better Together's message came with one of those emoticon things, the little image would look sullen, resentful and tight-lipped. To put it simply: not happy.

The words below would dismiss the hopeful as fools, dupes, or - what would be the calibrated phrase? - ethnic separatists. While a coalition government inflicts austerity with an ideological purpose on working Scotland, the text would attempt a Panglossian proposition: the best of all possible worlds.

Better Together hasn't earned many reviews for artistic interpretation. It has been marked down as relentlessly negative. What's harder to state, despite jolly celebs, is why repeated promises of "a positive case for the Union" have not been met. They try and try, yet somehow it doesn't come off. Mr McDougall is the bloke who's always in the kitchen at parties.

This week National Collective promoted the Twitter hashtag #YesBecause. It counted as another kind of canvassing. Among other things, it was a way to encourage people to declare themselves for independence in a way that can't be achieved on a ballot paper. Better than 100,000 tweets were recorded. Soon the notion was "trending", as they say, globally. I had a go.

None of it was statistically significant. None of it foretold the referendum result. Some tweeted more often than was wise. It made for a spectacle, nevertheless, as people spoke their slogans or their minds, hour after hour. On Mr McDougall's side of the fence, attempts at #NoBecause were half-hearted.

My little tweet said, "I'll vote #YesBecause it's best for the people, their children, and the children to come. I'll vote #YesBecause, for the first time, we can". Nothing special, that one, and only one of many. Better Together, with its dismally passionate believers in the big No, seems unable, perhaps unwilling, to contend with a human reality.

You are not awarded extra votes in proportion to your commitment. Those who don't care have rights equal to those who care. But if the issue is a country's future, hope and optimism are relevant. Unless, of course, it is your only task to eradicate those things.

Most of the media is simply not reporting the fact that meetings and debates, with big attendances, are going on in town halls, church halls and pubs up and down Scotland.

I don't know if it's because Meejah Studies have taught them that that kind of involvement in politics is dead, that 'the public' would rather be told what to think by ageing pop stars via coke-raddled 'models', but the mainstream does seem to be badly out of touch......

Hope that the people of Scotland do the best for their country and not someone else's.

Oor ain First Meenister does thon cissy Ice Bucket Challenge:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-28918393

Salmond and Sturgeon complete ice bucket challenge

[video]

The southern softy Dave renaged:

Prime Minister David Cameron was among those nominated by Mr Salmond, along with his deputy Nicola Sturgeon.

Ms Sturgeon took up the challenge moments later.

A government source said David Cameron would not take part in the ice bucket challenge. However, he will make a donation to a motor neurone disease charity.

If Mrs Panda is indeed pregnant, they could name the cub after Salmond. ECK ECK has a certain ring to it....