Man charged with assaulting George Galloway named as Neil Masterson

I joked earlier that the Unionists would probably claim that the disgraceful assault on George Galloway MP would be blamed on the Yes Scotland team, since blaming us for everything seems to be the last throw of the Unionist dice.

Joking aside, it is pleasing to report that a certain Neil Masterson has been charged with assaulting both Mr Galloway and a member of the public who went to the assistance of the MP.

There is a Neil Masterson who has this rather interesting Facebook page that contains these  posts:

Both of them were posted yesterday, as was this curious comment:

The case is due to be heard on Monday so we will find out more then. This Neil Masterson is a Roman Catholic who seems to have quite an interest in Israel, if his photo is to be believed:

Terror weapons found - Galloway assaulted by rabid Nat

As the Tories announce that the terror threat has been raised to severe, I expect that any moment it will be announced that photos such as the above are evidence that a major new arms cache has just been discovered. 

I also await with baited breath the news from the Unionist press that George Galloway MP was assaulted in the street by a supporter of Yes Scotland to prevent him from speaking out in favour of the Union.

Why is the Better Together campaign nowhere to be seen?

The postal votes have now been sent out and many people will already have cast ballots to decide the constitutional future of this island of ours. Will roughly a third of the land mass break away and reject the feral capitalist way in which the whole country has been governed for far too many decades, or will fear of the future and a desire to keep what little prosperity they have, lead voters to reject that chance?

More and more houses are now playing host to Yes posters, and very many people walk around proudly with a Yes badge on their lapels. The polls show that in spite of all the enthusiasm for change, the No vote is still in the lead. This forces us to ask the question: where are the No voters? If they are the majority as all the polls say, why are they not strutting their stuff in a triumphalist march towards victory?

It's not as if the average No voters are shrinking violets as this short video of some Better Together supporters shows:

If you enjoyed the sight of the guy in the England shirt, here's a bit more of him singing a Second World War ditty, just to show which century your average No voter thinks he lives in:

So why are these people not out as part of the Better Together campaign? Either they are too drunk, or the people running Better Together in London are embarrassed by them are the usual answers to that frequently asked question.

That said, there is another possible reason that explains why the No campaign has been so abysmal. Consider this leaflet which has been sent out by Better Together to people who have signed up for a postal vote:

Just look at this and consider that it demonstrates that the Better Together campaign thinks that its target voters are such utter fucktards that they need to be shown how to cast a No ballot!

Looked at in this light, is it any wonder that the No campaign is nowhere to be seen apart from on the television? A sizeable number of its supporters are thuggish drunks who can barely string a sentence together and so illiterate that they cannot read a simple form.

Two ordinary people made Alistair Darling squirm

Alex Salmond won the second independence debate, but nothing he said made Alistair Darling squirm as much as these comments from two ordinary members of the audience.

Yes given boost by Salmond's victory in the second debate

The second Scottish independence debate took place a short while ago and Alex Salmond won it by several furloughs. The Guardian published a quick poll which showed that seventy-one percent of the population agree with that verdict which will leave the Yes campaign enthused for the final three weeks until polling day.

The best moment came when a member of the audience asked the deceptively simple question: "If we are better together, why aren't we already better together?" Given that Scottish supermarkets employ bouncers to stop hungry people stealing food, that was a telling point.

A woman then told Alistair Darling that the next time he had fancy dinners with rich businessmen who want to take over the NHS, he should remember that Nye Bevin is sitting on his shoulder. That point got a loud and raucous cheer from the audience.

Darling was jeered several times, and as the debate wore on, the cheers for Salmond became louder. He seemed to relax and began to taunt Darling who responded by shouting as he felt the debate slipping away from him.  

I cannot remember anything that Darling said, but Salmond's sound bytes stick in the mind. A hundred thousand children expected to slide into poverty with current Westminster policies and a similar number of disabled folk losing their benefits. All that against a background of £4 billion a year being pissed away on Trident. 

With just over three weeks until polling day, and with the postal votes starting to go out tomorrow, this is just the boost that Yes needs.

Musselburgh Says Yes!

Musselburgh is a small town just outside Edinburgh, and provides a perfect getaway from the city. Today it played host to some independence campaigners, including an old 1950s fire engine of a type that used to be called a green goddess. Now in her new livery she is the Blue Goddess, but still only does eight miles to the gallon.

Leith Walk Independence Festival

Leith Walk is supposedly the longest street in Scotland and today it played host to an independence festival which took over some of the shops. There were also about a dozen street stalls and this magnificent old fire engine which has now been pressed into service for the good of the cause. 

The enthusiasm of the activists cannot be denied, and a lot of shoppers ended up taking badges and window posters away with them. 

The Yes campaign is not a monolithic body, instead is is a confederation of groups, all of whom seem to be doing their own thing, and trying to appeal to their voting niche. The activists range from at least one very pretty girl with a Business for Scotland badge to the members of the Radical Independence Campaign, with just about every other political shade in between.

I spoke to several activists who were honest enough to admit that what is needed is doorstep canvassing, but who then went on to say that they don't have the warm bodies to do that. Compared to the No campaign, which has to pay people to deliver their leaflets, as well as pretending that Tory and Labour party hacks are ordinary members of the public, the independence groups do have a sizeable membership which does seem to be made up of normal human beings. Alas, it's still not enough to go house to house.

That said, they are trying their best with the resources and people that they have available, and they certainly make up with enthusiasm what they lack in numbers.

An orgasmic yes vote

Coming for yes?

Could Yes be heading for victory?

Today the yes pledge reached one million signatories. When it began in 2012, Alex Salmond claimed that if that magic figure was reached, then independence was assured. So why are the polls telling a different story?

Professor John Curtice is one of the more respected British pollsters, and he has just noted a move towards Yes in the referendum. That aside, how accurate are polls when it comes to votes like this?

The quick answer is that they are not very accurate at all. The pollsters got the alternative vote referendum badly wrong by overstating the yes side by about ten percent. On purely Scottish matters they have consistently made mistakes, most notably in the 2011 elections when they predicted the constituency vote fairly well, but managed to understate the SNP regional list vote by a large amount.

The problem that the pollsters have is that a sizeable chunk of the Scottish electorate do not vote, either because they cannot be bothered to register, or because they just cannot be bothered getting off their arses and walking to the polling station on the day. The pollsters try to weight their findings to take those factors into account, but this referendum is different. For one thing because both sides have encouraged a high turnout and both have encouraged people to register for the vote. In England the registration form is a simple two page affair, but in Scotland it is an even simpler one page matter - and there are special forms for homeless people and the 16 and 17 year olds who can vote next month. Try as they might, the pollsters cannot accurately measure the voting intentions of people who have historically never voted, so they apply a weighting to their sample and hope for the best.  

If the turnout is high - say over eighty percent - then all bets must be off and we could just be looking at very interesting times starting on the 19th September.

First No posters and badges spotted in Edinburgh

They say that the first sight of a swallow is the harbinger of spring. This week I saw my first No badges and posters, which is hardly a sign of either swallows or spring, more like the vultures of autumn, but at least the No campaign is putting in an effort at last.

Yesterday I was driving home through one of the leafier suburbs when I saw a solitary No poster in the window of a large house. Today I glimpsed a No bumper sticker on the rear of a rather nice Mercedes, and then my joy knew no bounds when I saw a cove with a No Thanks badge on his lapel.

I would like to claim that the Yes posters are festooning every window, but that is sadly not the case. That said, more and more windows have them, and I would guess that about five percent of the houses in my area are sporting Yes posters. Badges are much more common, almost ubiquitous in fact. A couple of weeks ago the early adopters of the Yes badges would stop and chat to each other on the street, but now they seem to be on almost every lapel.

If the result of this referendum relied just on commitment to the cause, the Yes team would walk it by a mile.

Why are the Noes suddenly getting frightened?

With the referendum now just four weeks away the Westminster supporting team seems to be getting more and more frightened, which is curious when you consider the lead that they have in the polls. The latest sign of this wobbliness is the charge that an independent Scotland would not be a member of NATO and would not be able to watch the BBC.

Come on, are we supposed to be frightened by this? The Scottish National Party split over membership of NATO, and it took all of Alex Salmond's loquaciousness to get the party to accept an independent Scotland's membership of America's warmongering organisation. He did that to try and get the middle class onside for independence, but since that has obviously failed,  why should the rest of us not view with equanimity the thought of Scotland being free not just of London, but of Washington as well? I would go even further and say that the thought of the Russian navy making a goodwill visit to Leith fills me with rather a nice warm glow, and if they send half the fleet, well, that just shows how much goodwill they have, doesn't it? 

Who knows? Maybe President Putin will pay us a state visit? I don't know about you, but I much prefer a pussy lover to a bitch carrier...

Sadly, that will not happen because Scotland controls the northern seas, and is right next door to America's unsinkable aircraft carrier. Do you really think that the USA will permit London to make life difficult? The Westminster politicians will be slapped very firmly into line and told not to play silly buggers with America's strategic interests.

As for Auntie Beeb, what can I say? I use Cyber Ghost when I am abroad to watch British television and I also use it here in Scotland to watch American TV programmes that are not supposed to be shown outside the USA, and there are hundreds of others just like it. Most of them are free, easy to use, and they all fool the internet into thinking that you are pretty much anywhere in the world that you choose.

I wish I had an explanation for this latest bout of hand shandery from Westminster's stooges, but I don't. Refuting their latest spurts is easy, but trying to figure out why they are shooting their loads in this highly entertaining manner is rather more difficult.

All I can say is that something has loosened bowels in London that has made them throw caution to the wind and order everything to be thrown at the independence movement.

Annabelle Fuller is back in Nigel Farage's office

Senior figures in UKIP are reported to be furious that Nigel Farage is allowing Annabelle Fuller back into his office, according to one well-placed source in the party hierarchy. It's still unclear if she has returned to work for the party or is she is merely providing decoration. If the former is the case then it confirms the story that my source gave me some time ago which was that Farage had promised Annabelle that she could return to work for him once the dust had settled.

The question is has the dust really settled? We need to remember that German born Kirsten Farage is reported to have gone seriously Teutonic over her husband's alleged relationship with busty Annabelle. So if she really is back and drawing a salary for her activities, then it is unlikely that Kirsten will be unaware of this fact.

This leads people to ponder what deal has been done to stop Kirsten Farage screaming her head off?

Will the Scottish BBC cover the Edinburgh NO parade on the 13 September?

Craig Murray is reporting that the massive Orange march against Scottish independence that is planned for the 13th September here in Edinburgh will not be covered by the BBC. Craig's source says that this is because the Beeb does not want to “present an unfairly negative image of the No campaign.” As things stand this is just gossip from someone in the BBC to a blogger, and we will just have to wait and see if the story turns out to be accurate or not. 

That said, you can understand why the Better Together camp might want to keep their unofficial allies at arms length, which is why the Orange Lodges had to set up a separate outfit which they have called British Together. It must be terribly embarrassing for Better Together to know that the bulk of their support comes from the old feudal Scottish aristocracy, a pissant middle class that wants to keep its anthills to piss from and an army of thuggish, Protestant football fans who are grouped in the various Orange Lodges.

However, we are under no obligation to help them keep their dirty little secret under wraps. If Scotland votes no, then the victory will be due to the drunken buffoons that you can see in this short video. The aristos and pissants may head Better Together, but the bulk of the No voters are people who leave the rest of us feeling in need of a bath.

You can also understand why some pissants at the  BBC may just want to play down this fact by not giving coverage to a march in Edinburgh that is expected to involve thousands of swaggering dipsos staggering down Princes Street in central Edinburgh on the Saturday before the referendum.

I shall write to BBC Scotland and try and get some clarification about their plans for the march and I urge everyone else to do the same.

Edinburgh Fringe 2014: Mr Peewee, the Drumming Puppet

Meet Mr Peewee, the Drumming Puppet, who was entertaining the crowds today on Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

The Radical Independence Campaign gives yes a second wind

The train crash that was the independence debate last week appears to have persuaded rather a lot of yes supporters into volunteering their time in a last ditch attempt to snatch victory from what looks at the moment like certain defeat. In particular, groups like the Radical Independence Campaign have redoubled their efforts on the vast council estates which surround every major Scottish city with their slogan of Britain is for the rich, but Scotland can be ours.

It's an uphill battle, because out of a voting age population of just under 4.5 million, an estimated 300,000 are not even registered to vote and anything up to a further 700,000 probably won't bother casting a ballot.

Both the yes and no camps are aware that the legitimacy of the vote will be questioned if turnout is low, so both are encouraging people to register and then use their vote. Newspapers have got in on the act, with the Sunday Post running a registration campaign. It is possible to register up until midnight on the 2nd September, and Radical Independence activists are carrying around registration forms along with their usual information leaflets. There is even a special registration form for the homeless, who merely have to nominate a park bench or doorway as their normal abode, then they can vote at the polling station that is closest to that place. Their voter card can be sent to a church, homeless day centre or even kept for them to collect at the registration office. If people still do not vote, then it will not be for the want of trying on the part of the various campaigns.

The problem is that although the vast majority of wealthy and middle class types are likely to vote, that is not the case with the working class, as only just over half have said that they are certain to vote. You can understand their position, since if they don't vote they are ignored, and if they do they are also ignored. Many of the council estates have never been canvassed in any election in living memory. The Tories and Liberal Democrats know that they have few votes on those estates, and neither of them have enough members to canvass, anyway. Labour was happy with its one-party state, and although the SNP began to make inroads, their lack of members who could carry the message on the doorstep held them back.

The Radical Independence Movement has changed all this. If they succeed in  getting the poor to vote then Scotland will become independent. Otherwise it won't. 

Why we should vote yes for Scottish independence

A No vote on the 18th September 2014 is a vote to accept the defeats of the past three decades and more. It is an acceptance that there is no alternative to government of feral capitalism, backed by a repulsive voting bloc of  middle class types and aspirational, Southern English scrotes. Vote no and from deep within the bowels of Hell, Thatcher will have won another victory. On Earth, her scabby minions will laugh, and proceed with their nefarious schemes to further impoverish the ordinary man, and his wife and their children.

On the other hand, if you vote yes you will be giving the two-fingered salute to all of them - to the banksters and the employers, of course, but also to the employers' men. The people who have been given a bit of prosperity by the system and who are now determined to keep it. The pissant people, who are happy with the pathetic anthills that they piss from.

This isn't about a currency, as civilisations are remembered for their artefacts and not their bank rates. It is about the ordinary people of this part of Britain deciding together that they want something better for their children than a country where their working lives are spent with zero-hour contracts, interspersed with long periods on the social. A world where people have to dance to the tunes played by lardy-arsed managers with their National Front haircuts and cheap suits who get a hard-on from giving people grief. On the 18th September we have the chance to wipe the smiles off quite a few fat, smug well-fed faces. Isn't the thought of that worth a trip to the polling station?

Let's be honest: Alex Salmond messed up the debate comprehensively. He was still trying to persuade the middle class that everything will be the same after a yes vote, when common sense tells us that it won't be. Independence is a gamble, a step in the dark, but it is one worth taking.

It is worth it because we know that without independence the future will be as awful as the past. Nothing will change and we will still live in a world where bedroom taxes, zero-hour contracts and benefit sanctions are the people's lot.

If you look at it in those terms, you have the choice between waking up on the 19th September and knowing that the future will be exactly the same as the awful present, or waking up to the possibility that for the first time in over a generation, the future might just be better.

Vote yes to make that possibility a reality.

Thoughts on the referendum debate

I came away from the debate feeling that Alex Salmond had tried to be too clever by half and that his opponent, Alistair Darling, had landed some solid punches to emerge as the winner on points. Given that Salmond needed to demolish his opponent to have a hope of clawing back some votes, this might go down as a night that the nationalists will rue for many years to come.

The hardest punches were over the future of the currency that Scotland will use after independence. All Salmond could say was that of course there will be a currency union, but quite rightly Darling pressed him for a Plan B and  Salmond  ducked and weaved to avoid answering.

Now he could have come out fighting and said that if London gets stroppy it can kiss goodbye to the Faslane nuclear facility on day one of independence. Oh, and remember that share of the UK national debt that will fall to Scotland? Well, you can shove it. There are lots of issues that the UK will want Scotland to agree to, and thus lots of issues that can be traded off in the negotiations. The problem is that Salmond did not take that line.

Alternatively, the First Minister could have said that Plan B would be for Scotland to continue allowing the Scottish clearing banks to issue sterling denominated notes that are backed one hundred percent by interest bearing treasury gilts that are held in London. Darling would have replied that there would be a shortfall between the currency in circulation and the needs of the economy, which is true, so Salmond could have said that taxes on the middle class would have to rise, assuming that oil revenues and excise duties did not cover the difference. Given that the middle class is pretty overwhelmingly on the no side of the debate that strikes me as what the Americans call a no-brainer. 

Salmond gave none of those answers, and stonewalled his way through - which is why some people started to jeer him in that section of the debate.

I can understand why this strategy is being followed, because Yes Scotland wanted to get as many people onside as possible, and assumed that the working class would vote yes so it needed middle class support. The problem is that large chunks of working class people are so disengaged from this debate that they are not even registered to vote.

The referendum is now just six weeks away. I really do not know what Yes Scotland can do to turn this debate around.

Edinburgh Fringe 2014: Valentina Sulas

Meet Valentina Sulas, who assures me that her one-woman play, The Mother Of The Priest, is this year's not to be missed production. To quote from her flyer, The Mother Of The Priest is:

The tragic story of a priest yielding to the temptations of the flesh, his mother trying to persuade him to redeem himself, and his young passionate lover, in a small timeless village.

What more can I say? Valentina is engagingly lovely and has travelled a long way to bring us this production. You can see her at Venue 239, The Street, 2B Picardy Place, daily at 5.15pm until the 23 August 2014.

If you enjoy the play, please don't forget to drop something in the hat at the end.

Jim Murphy MP avoids a question

With the Indy referendum just a month away, there are any number of Yes campaign rallies and meetings up and down the country. The No teams are hardly seen, and Jim Murphy MP is probably one of the reasons why. Put simply, this 2 August rant in Ayr is typical of a No campaign that involves lots of shouting to very small groups of people:

In the video below, a woman tries to get Murphy to admit that Gordon brown lied when he said that an independent Scotland would not be able to get human organs for transplant from south of the border. That lie was shot down by the body responsible for matching organs with recipients, so all Murphy had to do was admit to that fact:

Instead he launches into a highly entertaining rant, whilst turning away from the questioner and refusing to meet her eye.

Maybe he was ashamed? If not, he should be.

Cheers: Wings Over Scotland