BBC’s Brian Taylor obscuring democratic debate
Scots have a right to vote either way in our independence referendum. I don’t blame ordinary Scots for not seeing the light. I pin the blame firmly where it belongs: BBC Scotland editors. On behalf of John Cridland’s CBI, they peddle lies to prop up the increasingly out-of-touch British state. Broadcasters who take money to lie about the referendum are not above criticism either, although the “I’m only doing my job” excuse does carry a little weight. Whistle-blowers can’t successfully act individually. They need the kind of protection only a trade union can provide.
When it comes to ordinary Scots who fall for BBC lies, all of them need to be treated with genuine respect. Refuse to do that, and watch them queue up to defeat us on the 18th of September.
When the Pope placed Galileo under house arrest to stop the evidence he’d uncovered with his telescope reaching the broader public, can the people as such be blamed for continuing to think the Sun went round the Earth? I don’t think so. In precisely the same way, Scots who think Tories, Lib Dems and Labour will grant splendid new devolution powers because this has been guaranteed by everyone cannot be blamed. The blame for this rampant false consciousness lies fairly and squarely at the door of the editor of Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics. He is refusing to expose the fact that Jo Coburn was given the truth, courtesy of ex-Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth, and she chose to change the subject, scared to death about the consequences it will have on our referendum: https://derekthomas2010.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/michael-forsyth-lets-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-tory-devolution-promises-are-lies/
There is zero chance there will be an extension of sovereign powers to Scotland’s Parliament at Holyrood. Jo Coburn et al know these devolution promises are nothing more than Lib Dem pledges. They are a lie concocted specifically to con Scots into voting against the only offer on the table: national independence, from which a new state would be free to negotiate bilateral deals with other nations and with multinational organizations: the European Union, NATO, Commonwealth, United Nations, Bank of England.
Being unilaterally kicked out of the European Union, despite our agreeing to abide by every one of the treaties signed in the name of six million Scots while subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – especially given that the Chief Whip of the Tory Party, Michael Gove, and David Cameron’s new Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, both insist they will vote to drag every single Scot out of the EU regardless of what we want, simultaneously dragging out every single English, Welsh and Northern Irish voter too… Is it not obvious that this is a ludicrous threat, a joke worthy of Monty Python?
Being kicked out of the EU when an independent Scotland will abide by all existing treaties is as unthinkable as is being kicked out of the United Nations for the ‘crime’ of exercising our right to national self determination. It is simply not going to happen. And if Andrew Wilson and Carolyn Leckie are unwilling to confront Pam Duncan and John Beattie, to tell them to their faces that they are both lying about this, then we have to ask what they are playing at? Are they taking license fee payers money to throw away as many votes as possible? That seems the most rational explanation for their behavior.
The same argument applies to a shared currency. Neither Andrew Wilson nor Carolyn Leckie have been prepared to stand up to the lies of Pam Duncan, John Beattie and the rest of the BBC, and other, broadcasters who insist a shared currency is just not going to happen. Why are BBC Scotland’s hand-picked YES Campaigners so utterly pathetic when it comes to exposing the lies of Better Together? Are they selected on the basis of how appalling they expect them to be?
The shared currency is a game changer for winning Scottish independence. It must be obvious to everyone that the YES Campaign have a variety of views on this. We are split. Nothing wrong with that. The referendum allows all those who favor Scottish independence – because that is the only question on the ballot paper other than the utterly unsustainable status quo – to park our differences. For the time being. On the other side of independence, there will be time aplenty for addressing our many differences. We can even expect a raft of new alliances, some short-term, others more substantial and long-lasting. The SNP is bound to split into a left and right-wing. It will probably split into more than two parties. There will also, inevitably, be a realignment of Scotland’s left. I expect to see Jim Sillars play a big part in that. Many of those who will have voted against independence will no doubt join a new party of Scotland’s left, including, probably, some big Labour Party figures. We cannot say how the Greens and what is left of the Labour Party will relate to it.
These are all projects for another day. For today, the YES Campaign is very relaxed about placing issues of contention onto the back burner: withdrawal from the EU, NATO, British Monarchy, raising or lowering corporation tax. I know which side I’m on most if not all of these. I know how successful I expect to be in persuading most Scottish voters. But these are questions for the future, for the time after we have liberated ourselves from the UK’s ludicrous unelected House of Lords, the authoritarian ‘Royal Prerogative’, an out-of-control British Intelligence, Special Branch undercover units of agent provocateurs and perjurers, state rapists, harvesters of dead children’s identities, those who collude in the assassination of civil liberties lawyers, those who frame witnesses of murder by vicious racists, such as the killers of Stephen Lawrence… And that is just the cherry on top of the British state’s authoritarianism.
Most votes in the United Kingdom’s Westminster elections are wasted votes. It is not just Scots who didn’t vote for Margaret Thatcher. Most of the English voted against her too. It was the media invention of the SDP-Liberal Alliance that sufficiently split the anti-Tory vote to allow the Prime Minister who, allegedly, covered up for a pedophile network to inflict so much damage on the British people, the English as well as the Scots. Everyone suffered. On the 18th of September, Scots have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get out of David Cameron’s Thatcherite dystopia. Then we can address all the issues of the day. Economic policy will be top of everyone’s agenda.
An independent Scotland will have its economic policy determined by the voters. Not by Alex Salmond. And not by his party neither. Salmond will have one vote, just like the rest of us. And his party will have the right to appeal to the electorate for a mandate. The same will be true of any new party Jim Sillars is involved in. Or Patrick Harvie.
What about the shared currency? There is a very good argument for Scots not wanting to be part of it. I have no problem with these people drawing up plans for a new currency. I have a few ideas of my own. I am quite attracted to the idea of a crypto-currency linked to gold that has been audited, a currency which acts as a real store of value, a rational unit of exchange, unlike the fantasy, ponzi scheme paper money printed by the Bank of England. Sterling has a very big problem. It is the same problem the dollar has. The Euro too. All those currencies are living on borrowed time. Scotland can make an excellent case for extricating ourselves from that mess asap. Nevertheless, when David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband unite to threaten to expel Scots from the assets of the Bank of England, then I am not joining hands with them. I will be forming a united front with every Scot who still sees more to Sterling than Max Keiser does. This is not about principle. It is about strategy and tactics. It is about distinguishing between, on the one hand, production coming to a halt at a factory or mine as a consequence of a withdrawal of labour by trade unionists, and, on the other hand, staff being locked out by a cost-cutting, union-busting management. Similar in appearance; totally opposite in content.
Scots absolve ourselves of 100% of the United Kingdom’s debt if, but only if, we are denied negotiations over the asset that is the Bank of England. All the debt accumulated over the centuries by the BOE belongs exclusively to those who own it. And if Scots are told by the leaders of all the parties of Better Together that we have been investing in the Bank of England for centuries and have secured absolutely nothing in return from our taxes, then every one of the dodgy deals of those who have been runing it are their responsibility. And theirs alone.
Gordon Brown sold off a massive percentage of the UK’s gold reserves at knockdown prices. Who pays for this breathtakingly bad financial mismanagement? Not Scotland. Certainly not us if we are to be denied any say in the assets of the BOE. Maggie Thatcher and Tony Blair wasted decades of North Sea Oil reserves propping up a degenerate state that has allowed the five ultra-rich individuals to accumulate more wealth than the poorest 20% of society. Scots are being told to put our trust in a man who blames his advisers for not explaining how sandwiches work, and who blames others for not knowing selling Rupert Murdoch’s SUN might be a vote loser, a man who turned a blind eye to the rich getting richer while the poor were getting ever more vulnerable while Blair and Brown were in office? The man who wants to preserve inequality, or at best tinker with it at the margins? Thanks, but no thanks.
Scotland’s North Sea Oil has been wasted for generations. The Scottish people have for half a century been told a pack of lies about how much oil is there, and what it is likely to be worth. We are told that, regardless of the atrocious record of the British state when it comes to lying about this oil, they are not lying now. Frankly, no one believes a word that comes out of the mouths of these incorrigible liars. But even if the oil reserves were running out as rapidly as they claim, what would that mean? It would mean that we have had all our natural assets bled dry by a predator state that wants to continue to treat us like slaves. The Scottish people in such circumstances would be entitled to substantial reparations. And if we can’t expect anything from the British state, then the very least we can expect to do is to stop paying the bills of the bastards who have been bleeding us dry all these years.
There is more than enough reasons for Scots to want to extricate ourselves from Sterling. Nevertheless, in order to maximize our claim to not being held responsible for any of the UK’s debt – which relative to GDP is now in an even more parlous state than it was on the eve of the 2008 financial crash – it is necessary to offer negotiations over the Bank of England. That would indeed lumber Scots with a share of the UK’s debt. However, if all negotiations have been taken off the table, not by us, but by the Better Together leaders, than the global markets will be on Scotland’s side, because we would have international law to back us up. We would be off the hook. 100%!
In such circumstances, Scots would need a currency. The Euro is not acceptable, and Carolyn Leckie had nothing to say on that score which reminds us yet again of how she added nothing to yesterday’s Crossfire ‘debate’. Bitcoin, I suspect, remains vulnerable. But the proposed ‘Goldfish’ cryptocurrency linked to gold that Jan Skoyles has been talking about… That strikes me as a viable currency.
The powerhouse of the global economy these days are the BRICS nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. They have gold. And the productivity of their labour is very good, which is why they are manufacturing what the world wants. Goldfish, or a similar currency, would be fine for an independent Scotland. The YES Campaign needs to make the case asap.
One last point. The title of this blog is about trolls, and I’ve said next to nothing about them. There’s a reason for that. It’s what they deserve. When it comes to the majority of Scots who echo the lies of John Beattie, Sarah Smith etc – because they don’t know any better – YES Campaign activists need to give them space to get the facts. We need to be respectful towards them for they know not what they do. Don’t abuse them. If they behave like trolls, then they forfeit their right to be referred to as ‘ordinary Scots’. We then must, as simply as possible, shake them off. If the only way to do that is by blocking them on Facebook, Twitter etc, because they refuse to listen to rational argument and to the facts, we need to ask ourselves why would they be doing that? Is it possible they simply want to suck up all our valuable time and energy, to distract us from getting any real work done? Is it possible these Better Together ‘BritNat’ trolls incessantly try to drag us down to their level in the hope of teaching us bad habit, getting us so worked up that one or two of us will get careless and say something stupid, treating innocent bystanders the way the trolls treat us, tricking some naive comrades into referring to women using the ‘B’ word? If so, they are like thugs on the football field, whose role is to mark gifted footballers, break a leg or two if they can get away with it. Ignore them. Block them if necessary. They’ll go away. Sooner or later they’ll go away.
WORKERS UNITED 
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