Re: Scareforce One Makes Day Trip To Aberdeen

**lily** Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:41 pm

Although I have only been a tourist in Scotland, I fell in love with the place. Truly did.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:46 pm

Scotland has a great sense of the past for me, Lily, I can actually feel it there when I never have anywhere else.

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:57 pm

And future. my dears. The story is a long way from finished.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:07 pm

It's a very strange place, Bonny, with a mind and sense of it's own.

**lily** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:15 pm

It feels like a strong place to me. Nothing effeminate about it at all. I find that quite reassuring.

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:23 pm

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae fam'd in martial story.
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
An' Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England's province stands-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro' many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English stell we could disdain,
Secure in valour's station;
But English gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay,
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I'll mak this declaration;
We're bought and sold for English gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

But what Rabbie couldn't know, couldn't foresee, is that we didn't go under, we managed to hang on. Somehow.

When a handful of corrupt lordings signed our nation away, the ordinary people of Edinburgh did their very best to lynch them. There never was a genuine union.

Me, I'd like to see Scotland to show the way, and for England, or Westminster, to take a long, hard look at itself.

Cornwall has nothing in common with London; the North has nothing in common with London. The real English people have nothing in common with London and those corrupt barstewards. I hope the real people find their voice again.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:24 pm

Everyone was always so nice to me when I worked on the buses, and protective. And absolutely no one laughed or made mock of my accent. But then I gained that from upper class Scots.
I still quite badly miss it on occasions. Getting a bit sentimental here. The Tenements and the Mountains.

If I ever win the lottery Scotland is where I will head for.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:30 pm

That's a rare poem, Bonny. Almost made me cry.

And I spent some time in Cornwall. You are right about that as well.

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:52 pm

Cornwall and Brittany are both Celtic, Sabot.

Be of good cheer, if and when we are a nation again, Beltane will be a national holiday. Which should make Bennett and co expire with rage. biggrin

**lily** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:53 pm

Cornwall was another place I loved so much. Was so surprised.

Politicians with power, no matter where, seem to have become drunk with their positions and forgot how they got there and who pays them and funds their idiotic ego trips.

**lily** Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:57 pm

bb1 wrote:Cornwall and Brittany are both Celtic, Sabot.

Be of good cheer, if and when we are a nation again, Beltane will be a national holiday. Which should make Bennett and co expire with rage.

See you in our SSSS section?

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:00 pm

Oh, can I talk about Secret Stuff there? Like, the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Founding Fathers? biggrin

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:07 pm

bb1 wrote:Cornwall and Brittany are both Celtic, Sabot.

Be of good cheer, if and when we are a nation again, Beltane will be a national holiday. Which should make Bennett and co expire with rage.

Yes, I know, Bonny. Which Is probably why I am drawn to these places. Irish Grandfather, Welsh Grandmother. And The MacDonell Clan from, Ireland have the largest grave at Culloden.

Have any of you read any of Diana Gabaldon's books of The Outlander Series. Some really interesting stuff about Beltane and all.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:12 pm

bb1 wrote:Oh, can I talk about Secret Stuff there? Like, the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Founding Fathers?

Yes please.

Sorry if this is boring but I lived in Arbroath for three years. I once saw a Wild Cat on the road to Dundee.

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:18 pm

Arbroath? Excellent wee toon. I wish I could recount some exciting wildlife, the best I can do is startling a deer when me and dogs were walking over cut field.

I would LOVE to see one of the big cats.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:24 pm

bb1 wrote:Arbroath? Excellent wee toon. I wish I could recount some exciting wildlife, the best I can do is startling a deer when me and dogs were walking over cut field.

I would LOVE to see one of the big cats.

It was a stupendous sight, Bonny. Really scary, except I was sitting in a car, although alone at the time. It was crouched by the road side, and just stayed there, so I drove on. I don't think I realised at the time how important it was. But I have never forgotten it. And it was big.

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:33 pm

How wonderful! I've never seen one, though quite a lot have.

The Outlander books are on my To be read, list.

**Sabot** Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:40 pm

A lot of them are breeding with feral domestic cats these days, so there aren't very many pure bred Wild Cats left, sad to say.

Tis important to start The Outlander series at the beginning because it's one hell of a tale.

**Lamplighter** Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:00 pm

As a half-Orcadian Scot, I do hope Scotland does gain its independence. I would have moved back there after I gave up my practice but the RA precluded that as the cold and damp are not good for me. `This is Stromness where I was born; our farm was north of there. LL

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Stromness

**lily** Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:42 pm

bb1 wrote:Oh, can I talk about Secret Stuff there? Like, the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Founding Fathers?

I enjoyed that, thank you. biggrin

LL, it looks so beautiful.

Will google the big cats as I somehow don't expect them to be like LL's. rofl

**Lamplighter** Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:51 pm

For me the two most beautiful places in the world are Stromness and Vienna. LL

**bb1** Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:51 pm

Maybe you can come back for a visit one summer, LL, the fog does roll back now and again. Honest.

**bb1** Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:09 pm

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-independence-now-becoming-palpable-3198563

Scottish independence is now becoming a palpable threat to the English elite, according to Jason Cowley
Mar 02, 2014 13:00 By Dailyrecord.co.uk 25 Comments

AS Alex Salmond gets set to address Westminster with his case for independence, Jason Cowley reflects on how the threat of a split is starting to cause panic amongst our English peers.

A COUPLE of weeks before the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, I wrote a leading article? in the New Statesman warning Labour that they were facing a defeat that would have profound?consequences for the party, Scotland and the United Kingdom.

Labour leader Ed Miliband was baffled. He said to a colleague of mine (and I paraphrase): “Why is Jason warning us about Scotland?”

He got his answer when Labour were deservedly routed and the SNP won a landslide victory.

For far too long, the Westminster establishment has been complacent about Scotland and the aspirations of the Scottish people.

It’s as if they misunderstood or hadn’t bothered even seriously to think about why so many Scots were restless for change. Or why so many Scots felt alienated from the globalised quasi-city state that is London and from the Westminster jamboree.

A politician such as the clownish UKIP leader Nigel Farage has huge influence in England, even though his party does not hold a single Westminster seat. His populist anti-immigrant, anti-European rhetoric is shaping Conservative and Labour party policy. In Scotland, UKIP are an irrelevance.

In the 1955 general election, the Conservative and Unionist Party won a majority of seats in Scotland. In 1997, in the last general election before the introduction of devolution, they won none out of 72 seats. A spectacular decline.

The harshness and cruelty of the Thatcher years destroyed the Tories north of the Border. They dumped the poll tax on Scotland first and myopically opposed devolution.

Today, PM David Cameron would rather lecture the Scots from the safety of an empty velodrome in London than dare to speak in Edinburgh or debate directly with the First Minister. If he did, heknows he would be traduced and ridiculed.

Labour have big problems, too. They have lost the support in Scotland of many intellectuals, writers and artists who now favour independence, if not the SNP. These people matter because they create a culture and a climate of opinion.

Meanwhile, among the poorest fifth of Scots, Alex Salmond has an extraordinary approval rating of +26. The battle for independence is increasingly dividing along class lines. For decades, Labour treated Scotland as if it was their personal fiefdom. The party became bloated and the talent pool more shallow as the most able Labour politicians – Donald Dewar, Robin Cook, John Smith, Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Douglas Alexander – all headed south.

At Westminster, Salmond is respected as a dangerous and formidable opponent but until very recently the standard line on Scottish independence was: “It won’t happen.”

But now there is a palpable sense of panic among English elites. London-based liberal media commentators are writing plaintive pleas for the Scots not to go. Even veteran rocker David Bowie has a view – from New York. There is growing anxiety, certainly among Labour supporters, that independence would result in an increasingly Eurosceptic, permanently Tory-dominated, rump-UK. Meanwhile, Scotland would be free to forge a new identity as a Nordic-style social democracy.

In a New Statesman essay this week, Salmond writes of how an independent Scotland could act as a progressive beacon for those in these islands who yearn for a fairer society. On Tuesday evening, he will, at our invitation, come south to give a lecture making the case for independence in the heart of Westminster.

The English are belatedly waking up to the threat he poses to the unity of these islands. His long-held mission is to break up the British state. The British state is fighting back, hence George Osborne’s declaration –supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats – that the UK would not enter into monetary union with an independent Scotland.

When I visited the FM at Bute House in Edinburgh last summer, he told me we were in the early stages of a “phoney war”. “We are just clearing the ground,” he said.

Well, the ground has been cleared and battle begun in earnest. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the status quo is unacceptable.

I expect Salmond will lose narrowly in September but be able to claim a kind of victory. He must sense the UK is moving inexorably towards federalism. Even if it remains inside the Union, Scotland will not have to wait too long for even greater autonomy.

**lily** Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:50 pm

May the best man win and toss his caber!

**bb1** Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:54 pm

Yes, we are living in Interesting Times.

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