RISE - The "Scottish Syriza"

[Mr Rational]

But that's just it - they don't.

Oh he gets it, the rest of them don't which is par for the course.

He's banging his head against a wall trying to get his wee bit to modernise, but as everyone knows, the problem with any left wing party started when the second member joined. They all think they know best and there's no party discipline so it's like herding cats at best, open warfare at worst.

[Ad Lib]

Robin Harper is the figurehead really; quite a few Aberdeenshire Greens that I have come across voted No in the referendum and are pretty right wing economically, being environmentalist for romantic reasons, rather thsn the socio-economic reasons dunning1874 alludes to. He is also right to suggest that the right wing demographic in the party may not wield all that much actual power now. But, like the Ewing-ites in the SNP, they still exist.

Robin Harper's right wing? Behave.

Unless your definition of right wing includes Nicola Sturgeon and most of the elected politicians for the Scottish National Party, that's a serious amount of nonsense you're coming out with there.

[Grim O'Grady]

😀

That's very funny and quite true and I'm an SNP member (albeit a burnt out ex-SSP one)

Surely independence is about giving Westminster a bloody nose? We will still be tied to the same constraints, whoever the puppets are, they can swing to the left but the gravy I mean gravity will always pull them to the centre.

The centre is the status quo, the ruling class continue to pull the strings whomever we use our once every 4 year democracy on.

What's truly funny is that the SNP are being called socialist but then anyone left of Labour are called that.

I was in leafy Stockbridge the other weekend, there was a stall outside Scotmid, I went over being a nosy c**t, only to be handed a Slab postcard, I had it out with the guy about taxing us to pay for something we did not cause, he told me the SNP are worse & will tax me more, I said it's not what they've said, whereas you are saying it out loud. I finished with you've now convinced me where my 1st vote is going. SNP & also convinced me that my 2nd vote won't be Slab.

Grimbo

[Broomhill Ultra]

Surely independence is about giving Westminster a bloody nose? We will still be tied to the same constraints, whoever the puppets are, they can swing to the left but the gravy I mean gravity will always pull them to the centre.

The centre is the status quo, the ruling class continue to pull the strings whomever we use our once every 4 year democracy on.

I know what you're saying and I have some sympathy for the old 'if voting changed anything they'd abolish it' argument. I also have never really bought this Scotland is a social democrat/socialist country at heart.

BUT I increasingly look at the situation in England and think there is a real difference in the way the two countries are headed. The rise of the BNP & now UKIP, privatisation of education and the NHS, voting this bunch of cruel Tory b*****ds back in. These all seem to me to be the opposite (simplifying things clearly) of what is happening in Scotland.

I think independence will give us the chance to do things differently, just hope it comes about before our public services are destroyed as well.

[Wee Willie]

Surely independence is about giving Westminster a bloody nose? We will still be tied to the same constraints, whoever the puppets are, they can swing to the left but the gravy I mean gravity will always pull them to the centre.

The centre is the status quo, the ruling class continue to pull the strings whomever we use our once every 4 year democracy on.

What's truly funny is that the SNP are being called socialist but then anyone left of Labour are called that.

I was in leafy Stockbridge the other weekend, there was a stall outside Scotmid, I went over being a nosy c**t, only to be handed a Slab postcard, I had it out with the guy about taxing us to pay for something we did not cause, he told me the SNP are worse & will tax me more, I said it's not what they've said, whereas you are saying it out loud. I finished with you've now convinced me where my 1st vote is going. SNP & also convinced me that my 2nd vote won't be Slab.

Grimbo

Good for you.

I wish you had filmed that discussion.

It would have looked great on youtube.

[Grim O'Grady]

I know what you're saying and I have some sympathy for the old 'if voting changed anything they'd abolish it' argument. I also have never really bought this Scotland is a social democrat/socialist country at heart.

BUT I increasingly look at the situation in England and think there is a real difference in the way the two countries are headed. The rise of the BNP & now UKIP, privatisation of education and the NHS, voting this bunch of cruel Tory b*****ds back in. These all seem to me to be the opposite (simplifying things clearly) of what is happening in Scotland.

I think independence will give us the chance to do things differently, just hope it comes about before our public services are destroyed as well.

Nowt wrong with showing the English or rUK there is an alternative to the Tory's but I still fear ultimately where or how far the SNP can lead us without a drink.

Ok I can only vote 1 SNP 2 Socialist Alternative. But The Left are so split now, it's like Russian roulette eh?

We need another pioll tax leveler to unite us as a country but more importantly as a class.

Grimbo

[WaffenThinMint]

Oh he gets it, the rest of them don't which is par for the course.

He's banging his head against a wall trying to get his wee bit to modernise, but as everyone knows, the problem with any left wing party started when the second member joined. They all think they know best and there's no party discipline so it's like herding cats at best, open warfare at worst.

 

Best he gets out while the going's good. The far left and far right in this country will never, ever change, and the decent people who get mixed up with them always end up getting hurt.

 

The British far left live in a world of fantasies of general strikes, Spanish Civil War fetishism, Soviet Russia/Maoist China revisionism & the sort of doctrinal obsessiveness usually only found within the Heinz 57 varieties of Scottish Presbyterianism. The far-right meanwhile are a combination of mawkish sentimentalists with past British glories, pet-lippers at Johnny Foreigner being better than us at just about everything, & at the more sinister end outright Hitler groupies or John Tyndall worshippers who refuse to accept he wasn't a thoroughly evil old b*****d the world is well rid off.

 

Both are obsessed with machismo posturing & violence whenever they think they can get away with it, but not half as much as they do with their supposed "comrades".

 

The future for anyone in the radical left or right in Britain once they've come to their senses is the Greens - but all too often people who get involved in the lunatic fringes are either burned out from politics for good or are there for life, intoxicated by the endless petty dramas & intrigues which go on, like being part of their own little psycho soap opera.

[Ad Lib]

I know what you're saying and I have some sympathy for the old 'if voting changed anything they'd abolish it' argument. I also have never really bought this Scotland is a social democrat/socialist country at heart.

BUT I increasingly look at the situation in England and think there is a real difference in the way the two countries are headed. The rise of the BNP & now UKIP, privatisation of education and the NHS, voting this bunch of cruel Tory b*****ds back in. These all seem to me to be the opposite (simplifying things clearly) of what is happening in Scotland.

I think independence will give us the chance to do things differently, just hope it comes about before our public services are destroyed as well.

The "rise" of the BNP? Behave. They got absolutely shredded and barely exist any more.

[Mr Rational]

Best he gets out while the going's good. The far left and far right in this country will never, ever change, and the decent people who get mixed up with them always end up getting hurt.

The British far left live in a world of fantasies of general strikes, Spanish Civil War fetishism, Soviet Russia/Maoist China revisionism & the sort of doctrinal obsessiveness usually only found within the Heinz 57 varieties of Scottish Presbyterianism. The far-right meanwhile are a combination of mawkish sentimentalists with past British glories, pet-lippers at Johnny Foreigner being better than us at just about everything, & at the more sinister end outright Hitler groupies or John Tyndall worshippers who refuse to accept he wasn't a thoroughly evil old b*****d the world is well rid off.

Both are obsessed with machismo posturing & violence whenever they think they can get away with it, but not half as much as they do with their supposed "comrades".

The future for anyone in the radical left or right in Britain once they've come to their senses is the Greens - but all too often people who get involved in the lunatic fringes are either burned out from politics for good or are there for life, intoxicated by the endless petty dramas & intrigues which go on, like being part of their own little psycho soap opera.

He's been telt all this but he's a socialist through and through and he won't change. Shame, because he gets in with most of the SNP down his part of the world, so much in fact that he was in the pub with most of the main folk last night, they would welcome him with open arms...

[AMMjag]

I can at least understand the 'Greens are leafy middle-class students' stuff; it's straight out of the 'Scotland's actually quite right wing you know' textbook of tone-trolling.

But the Greens as a place for the radical right? Bat-shit mental stuff that could only come from WTM.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

No Judean People's Front?

Or People's Front for Judea?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Who was the guy who was the editor of a west highland newspaper many years ago?

He was anti everything but he ended up a labour lord.

From one extreme to another.

Brian Wilson.

[Broomhill Ultra]

The "rise" of the BNP? Behave. They got absolutely shredded and barely exist any more.

You think I don't know that? The votes they attracted have mostly gone to UKIP which was implied in what I said. Vote went from 47,000 in 2001 to 563,000 in 2010 which I would classify as 'a rise'.

[Bishop Briggs]

Brian Wilson.

 

Hero to villain!

[Broomhill Ultra]

Or People's Front for Judea?

No ironically the defend Palestine tent was there and seemed united.

[Bishop Briggs]

You think I don't know that? The votes they attracted have mostly gone to UKIP which was implied in what I said. Vote went from 47,000 in 2001 to 563,000 in 2010 which I would classify as 'a rise'.

 

And the BNP has sunk into oblivion, running up huge debts, since then. It lost both its seats in the European Parliament in 2014. It's as dead as John Cleese's dead Norwegian Blue parrot.

[WaffenThinMint]

I can at least understand the 'Greens are leafy middle-class students' stuff; it's straight out of the 'Scotland's actually quite right wing you know' textbook of tone-trolling.

But the Greens as a place for the radical right? Bat-shit mental stuff that could only come from WTM.

 

That's because you are thick as shite. Nothing personal, but really you are - truly - thick as shite, & out of your depth. Again.

 

The Green Party started off as the rather right wing "People" back in 1972 founded by former Coventry Tories whose primary concern was there being too many proles breeding & using up "their" planetary resources. Most of its early recruits were of the survivalist or "England's green and pleasant land" variety - their drift to the left was a gradual process.

 

This really shouldn't come as a surprise. The environmental movement had its roots in conservatism & the right, the left meanwhile viewed it with suspicion as the landed classes looking for new excuses to prevent their large estates being broken up by a future socialist government.

 

Long before the Green Party came along, the early National Front partially bankrolled the Hunt Saboteurs Association - indeed, their magazine "Howl" was originally edited by NF student leader David McCalden (a rather vicious anti-Semite as well as a militant vegan).

 

The original environmentalist scourge of landowners & the National Trust, & Right To Roam campaigner Rodney Legg, had been a famous member of the League of Empire Loyalists (which started the NF), as had Nettie Bonnar, the Chief Administrative Officer of the government  Nature Conservancy Council by the 1980s. The former secretary of the LEL - the appropriately named Leslie Green (who stood for the LEL in Parliamentary elections as a thinly disguised Independent Loyalist) - was in her twilight years to become involved not merely in the more loony parts of the eco-movement, but as the Legalise Cannabis Alliance candidate for North East Scotland in 2001 at the ripe old age of 75 - and counted as one of her closest friends the Scottish Green Party's most famous wacky baccy exponent Linda Hendry.

 

And then there's the likes of Richard Lawson, Troy Southgate, Phil Andrews, etc. whose dabblings with environmentalism (as both the far-left & far-right both did during the 1980s/90s in their desperate attempts to stay afloat) ended up pulling them away from Nazi nutters - whoops sorry, "Patriots" - virtually altogether.

 

Stick to badly trolling SPL threads with the usual suspects - leave the more complex topics to the grown ups, kthxbai.

Edited March 26, 2016 by WaffenThinMint

[Wee Willie]

Who was the guy who was the editor of a west highland newspaper many years ago?

He was anti everything but he ended up a labour lord.

From one extreme to another.

Brian Wilson.

Hero to villain!

Aye, that's the c**t.

Hero to villain! should be engraved on his tombstone.

[AUFC90]

Margo McDonald probably had a bigger national profile than RISE does.

She probably had a larger profile than the irrelevance that is the entire Scottish Liberal Democrat Party.

[Ivo den Bieman]

Robin Harper's right wing? Behave.

Unless your definition of right wing includes Nicola Sturgeon and most of the elected politicians for the Scottish National Party, that's a serious amount of nonsense you're coming out with there.

 

Robin Harper votes NO

 

also pro-monarchy and a soft-c one nation tory.

 

such people exist in the Green party. He may be awfully polite and nice, and have an interesting range of multi coloured angora scarves, but he's still right wing.

 

not really my fault if you know nothing about the past of some Greens or the history of the party. The party these days is much more left leaning than it was in earlier times and there is some residual internal tension between left and right.