Originally Posted by
Oddquine
The reality is that someone is lying.
You can, if that is what you prefer to think, convince yourself that the French Ambassador, the French Consul General and Nicola Sturgeon are lying, or alternatively you can convince yourself that someone in the Scottish Office is lying...but sure as hell someone is. I am sure you will understand why I am more inclined to believe the Scottish Office is making the same kind of mischief as they did during the referendum, as opposed to believing that Nicola Sturgeon would be so abysmally stupid as to say anything which could be used to smear her at this, or any stage, in the election run-up.
Given this "memo", if it exists, has been around since the beginning of March, and is referring to a meeting which took place in February, am I the only person who thinks it is a shade "interesting" that it turns up in the Torygraph so soon after Nicola did well at the leader's debates?
Not that I'm donning my conspiracy theory tinfoil hat, but we appear to have the 2015 equivalent of the 1924 Zinoviev letter...which was instrumental in winning that election for the Tories. In reality, what we have is an an entirely uncorroborated third or fourth hand account denied by all participating parties and clearly intended to damage the SNP. We have a "memo", about which the FCO, which is purported to have leaked it to the Torygraph, claim to have no knowledge........we have a Scottish Office "not commenting on leaked documents"...we also appear to have a Scottish Secretary who isn't overly bothered about keeping on top of what is happening on the Scottish political scene, given he "didn't know anything about the "memo" until it was reported in the Torygraph"....and the utter coincidence of Scottish Labour Twitterati being online tweeting about it extensively within twenty minutes of it being published.
Re surely it would be better to just vote labour rather than SNP.......we have been voting Labour in the majority of seats, though not in popular vote, in Scotland since 1959 for UK elections, for all the good that has done for Scotland. In that time, as an opposition to the Tories for 30 of those years, Labour has been as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to doing anything which helps Scotland...remember the Poll Tax and the feeble fifty, who were perceived as feeble, even by Labour supporters? And when they were in before 1979, they didn't accomplish that much bar IMF control, because England wouldn't vote for them in big enough numbers. Before the 1997 election, to gain votes in England, Blair pulled Labour rightwards...and they spent the next 13 years becoming Tory-lite and forgetting the principles on which they were founded.
Voting SNP in Scotland won't let the Tories in, any more than voting Labour in Scotland in the past has ever stopped the Tories getting in if England votes that way...whichever of the "big two" gets in is solely down to the choices made by the voters in England....the only difference we ever make by voting for a UK party in a general election is regarding the size of the majority it does, or doesn't, get....a lot of Labour seats in Scotland increases the Labour majority(or gives them a small majority IF people in England vote them to within striking distance of getting one in the first place).....and a large number of Labour seats in Scotland, if England votes majority Tory, simply cuts the size of that Tory majority. And whichever way the vote goes....Labour majority or Tory majority, Scotland's voice might be heard, via the SNP MPs, but won't be listened to unless that voice fits the plan in place for the UK (ie London, the Home Counties and the prestige of the UK Government on the world stage.)
We know that Labour has no plans to change anything in the last Tory budget, and will cut as much as the Tory government, though perhaps in different areas, but I'm not overly impressed with the only differences between the two options being the route taken to get to the same place at around the same time to catch the same bus. That's not a choice, that is a coin-toss using a double-headed penny.
If you are happy with continued austerity, continued expansion of zero-hours contracts, part-time jobs, and pretendy self-employment to "cut" the numbers claiming JSA; if you are happy with the sanctioning of people for being ten minutes late for appointments at the job centres, for filling in the forms incorrectly or for not finding enough jobs to apply for in the 35 hours a week they are meant to search for one; if you are happy at the declaring of people with terminal cancers and people awaiting heart transplants and being kept alive by portable machines, fit for work, happy with people with real health problems dying penniless before their appeals against removal of their disability benefits, people with mental health problems committing suicide because they can't cope with the hassle any more; if you are happy with our finite resources being handed over to corporations as working tax credits so they can spend less of their own money and increase their profits, which they then ship out to a tax haven, without bothering to pay their taxes.......then by all means vote for one or other of the Unionist Parties.
Me, I'll vote SNP........for the possibility of political change for the UK and for Scotland.
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