Oor Nicola Sturgeon thread.

[renton]

9 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Wings is just recycling what loads of people have been saying on the ground for ages. Maybe news takes a bit longer to travel down to Bath these days. It's funny because a lot of what he's written there isn't incorrect (given it's not his original analysis that's probably why) but his conclusion that it's a dastardly plot by the party to fatten their wallets rather than just the inevitable outcome of a party which is led by shitebags who are too cautious to rock the boat is where his general trans induced psycho paranoia leads him.

 

It shows that there's a constituency for independence leaning voters that are concerned by the SNP's lack of movement and surely not all of them are fringe nutcases like yon Bath boy.

I go backwards and forwards on this a lot, and I get why people are disappointed at the lack of forward momentum, yet I think we are stuck in a strategic straitjacket here.

The oft cited issue with waiting on an s30 order backed by a Scottish parliamentary mandate is that a Tory government can happily shrug its shoulders and ignore any mandate it chooses.

This is obvious because the British constitution relies on uncodified conventions and norms of behaviour to function, and like Trump before them, Johnson and Cummings have learnt that they can ignore these norms and be faced with only impotent rage. They aren't playing fair, but equally there is no codified regulations that require them to do so.

Yet the issue that bedevils an s30 strategy also makes a consultative referendum strategy pretty hairy. The British government can simply ignore any result it doesn't like, there is no legal force to compel it to do anything. There may be an outcome that works, but ScotGov would have to demonstrate that the referendum was fair beyond dispute, that there was no Unionist boycott (I.e. a high turnout) and critically that there was an overwhelming appetite for change. 51/49 wouldn not suffice to compel the British Government to do something it had not committed itself legally to do.

Clearly, that looks like a bit of a hail mary pass, and surely would require more years of building up support. It needs to be a fait accompli in terms of support levels to have any hope.

What else is there? Complaining to the ECHR which quite apart from the fact it wouldnt get involved with something that would set precedent for other EU breakaway nations, but also wont have any jurisdiction over us soon anyway.

UDI? What does that even look like? A bunch of AUOB crack troops piled on the back the bikers for independence bikes riding down to Pacific Quay and arresting Jackie Bird? Running street battles to suppress pockets of Unionist resistance in old folks homes? It wouldnt be recognised by anyone (maybe the Chinese, just to piss off the British - we could give the Duke of Westminsters land to the deputy vice chair of the Chinese  communist Party) and would lead to the dissolution of the Scottish parliament and the outlawing in all probability of the SNP.

The only way through that I can see is patience and support building. I think at this point, unless there is s sudden prolapse in Johnson's areshole, that we are at least a UK parliamentary term away from being able to go again, and that has little enough to do with Sturgeon's innate caution.

Edited June 10, 2020 by renton

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

2 minutes ago, renton said:

I go backwards and forwards on this a lot, and I get why people are disappointed at the lack of forward momentum, yet I think we are stuck in a strategic straitjacket here.

The oft cited issue with waiting on an s30 order backed by a Scottish parliamentary mandate is that a Tory government can happily shrug its shoulders and ignore any mandate it chooses.

This is obvious because the British constitution relies on uncodified conventions and norms of behaviour to function, and like Trump before them, Johnson and Cummings have learnt that they can ignore these norms and be faced with only impotent rage. They aren't playing fair, but equally there is no codified regulations that require them to do so.

Yet the issue that bedevils an s30 strategy also makes a consultative referendum strategy pretty hairy. The British government can simply ignore any result it doesn't like, there is no legal force to compel it to do anything. There may be an outcome that works, but ScotGov would have to demonstrate that the referendum was fair being dispute, that there was no Unionist boycott (I.e. a high turnout) and critically that there was an overwhelming appetite for change. 51/49 wouldn ot suffice to compel the British Government to do something it had not committed itself legally to do.

Clearly, that looks like a bit of a hail mary pass, and surely would require more years of building up support. It needs to be a fait accompli in terms of support levels to have any hope.

What else is there? Complaining to the ECHR which quite apart from the fact it wouldnt get involved with something that would set precedent for other EU breakaway nations, but also wont have any jurisdiction over us soon anyway.

UDI? What does that even look like? A bunch of AUOB crack troops piled on the back the bikers for independence bikes riding down to Pacific Quay and arresting Jackie Bird? Running street battles to suppress pockets of Unionist resistance in old folks homes? It wouldnt be recognised by anyone (maybe the Chinese, just to piss off the British - we could give the Duke of Westminsters land to the deputy vice chair of the Chinese  communist Party) and would lead to the dissolution of the Scottish parliament and the outlawing in all probability of the SNP.

The only way through that I can see is patience and support building. I think at this point, unless there is s sudden prolapse in Johnson's areshole, that we are at least a UK parliamentary term away from being able to go again, and that has little enough to do with Sturgeon's innate caution.

Much easier to just ignore all those obstacles and blame it on the SNP having no appetite for independence cause all politicians are greedy b*****ds with no principles. And their support for "blokes in dresses". See, now you don't have to worry about it!

[Wee-Bey]

The obvious answer is surely to play Johnson and Cummings at their own game. There's no point in sticking to the rule book, or uncodified conventions and norms of behaviour if your opponents don't.

Civil disobedience, let's tie the Scottish Office up in knots and start dipping our toes into reserved matters. Many of us want Scotland to be an independent country, let's start acting like one.

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, renton said:

The only way through that I can see is patience and support building. I think at this point, unless there is s sudden prolapse in Johnson's areshole, that we are at least a UK parliamentary term away from being able to go again, and that has little enough to do with Sturgeon's innate caution.

Cut out most of the post just to save on length even tho I'm not gonna go through it line-by-line. I don't disagree with anything you're saying and I don't think it's a case of either or. It's clear the SNP have a tightrope to walk here but I do think their natural cautiousness is also limiting their horizons here. You've alluded to it yourself but Cummings and Johnson have had wild success by pissing on the conventions and norms that govern the UK and I think the SNP could, and should, be doing the same here.

1 hour ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

The obvious answer is surely to play Johnson and Cummings at their own game. There's no point in sticking to the rule book, or uncodified conventions and norms of behaviour if your opponents don't.

Civil disobedience, let's tie the Scottish Office up in knots and start dipping our toes into reserved matters. Many of us want Scotland to be an independent country, let's start acting like one.

Things like this are worth looking at. I don't think it's controversial anymore though to say that while part of the motivation is the SNP don't want to alienate soft Nos another is that this is a risky strategy that puts them in direct opposition with Westminster which necessarily means they'll be held further responsible for f**k ups unlike when they passively accept budget cuts and heap them on to the councils.

As it stands, however, I don't see where a referendum comes from unless Starmer scrapes his way into No. 10 requiring SNP support. If the boundary changes go through and the Tories get back in despite the SNP hoovering up 45 seats or whatever we're reduced to then I think you see another parliamentary term of deafening silence on Scotland's constitutional position. Even Starmer atm is determined to reject a referendum in favour of wooly federalism although that could change if they get slaughtered up here which will probably just get blamed on Leonard alone as it stands.

Anyway, there's tentative steps beginning on the left to try and consider a cross-party/ non-party convention or something to brainstorm alternatives here that go beyond the SNP's legalism and Wings' UDI and kill (trans people) options. I think the most common yet infuriating response was that nobody has a clue about where we actually go from here. 

[pandarilla]

The obvious answer is surely to play Johnson and Cummings at their own game. There's no point in sticking to the rule book, or uncodified conventions and norms of behaviour if your opponents don't.

Civil disobedience, let's tie the Scottish Office up in knots and start dipping our toes into reserved matters. Many of us want Scotland to be an independent country, let's start acting like one.

That's a dangerous strategy.

 

The status quo is working in our favour. Sensible, non-political, soft no-voters are seeing the direct consequences of shite governance compared to a well-run administration.

 

Patience is key. And i think the old adage about not interrupting your enemy whilst they're making mistakes fits nicely.

 

Cummings and Johnson's chaos strategy has not worked in Scotland.

 

We might need to take more drastic action soon, but at the moment the slowly, slowly catchy-monkey plan is going well. And time is moving on, which helps with the age demographic, as well as the 'but we just had a referendum' attack.

 

Major social and economic change comes in many different forms. I've seen it described best as a 'chaotic landslide'. The blm campaign in Britain is going to change things very quickly (watch out for those statues and street names).

 

But right now things are moving in our favour.

 

[renton]

8 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Cut out most of the post just to save on length even tho I'm not gonna go through it line-by-line. I don't disagree with anything you're saying and I don't think it's a case of either or. It's clear the SNP have a tightrope to walk here but I do think their natural cautiousness is also limiting their horizons here. You've alluded to it yourself but Cummings and Johnson have had wild success by pissing on the conventions and norms that govern the UK and I think the SNP could, and should, be doing the same here.

Things like this are worth looking at. I don't think it's controversial anymore though to say that while part of the motivation is the SNP don't want to alienate soft Nos another is that this is a risky strategy that puts them in direct opposition with Westminster which necessarily means they'll be held further responsible for f**k ups unlike when they passively accept budget cuts and heap them on to the councils.

As it stands, however, I don't see where a referendum comes from unless Starmer scrapes his way into No. 10 requiring SNP support. If the boundary changes go through and the Tories get back in despite the SNP hoovering up 45 seats or whatever we're reduced to then I think you see another parliamentary term of deafening silence on Scotland's constitutional position. Even Starmer atm is determined to reject a referendum in favour of wooly federalism although that could change if they get slaughtered up here which will probably just get blamed on Leonard alone as it stands.

Anyway, there's tentative steps beginning on the left to try and consider a cross-party/ non-party convention or something to brainstorm alternatives here that go beyond the SNP's legalism and Wings' UDI and kill (trans people) options. I think the most common yet infuriating response was that nobody has a clue about where we actually go from here. 

I'd be interested in what kind of reserved matters people are talking about getting into. My only concern is that where there is codified law, the centre of gravity is obviously Westminster, so any attempt to get into that with the UK government would be a pretty asymmetrical fight.

[NotThePars]

26 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

Cummings and Johnson's chaos strategy has not worked in Scotland.

It's never been calibrated for Scotland. Their strategy is to completely ignore Scotland and pretend there isn't a mandate for independence. Once they engineer these boundary changes they'll assume they can govern in virtual perpetuity. What about Sturgeon and the SNP are they bothered about? I imagine Johnson bristles a little when Blackford has a go at him at PMQs but that's five minutes a week and not remotely threatening to the integrity of the UK.

The election in 2019 was a disaster across the board and one of them might well be any hope of a referendum in the near future. That's my doomer take atm that I hope I'm wrong about.

 

[Wee-Bey]

1 hour ago, pandarilla said:

That's a dangerous strategy.

 

The status quo is working in our favour. Sensible, non-political, soft no-voters are seeing the direct consequences of shite governance compared to a well-run administration.

 

Patience is key. And i think the old adage about not interrupting your enemy whilst they're making mistakes fits nicely.

 

Cummings and Johnson's chaos strategy has not worked in Scotland.

 

We might need to take more drastic action soon, but at the moment the slowly, slowly catchy-monkey plan is going well. And time is moving on, which helps with the age demographic, as well as the 'but we just had a referendum' attack.

 

Major social and economic change comes in many different forms. I've seen it described best as a 'chaotic landslide'. The blm campaign in Britain is going to change things very quickly (watch out for those statues and street names).

 

But right now things are moving in our favour.

 

Risks are going to have to be taken at some point. 

[Detournement]

13 hours ago, BawWatchin said:

So is everybody responding to this pish a transphobe?

I think we all know who has lost the plot here and it isn't independence supporters.  It's the SNP MPs themselves.

Who are the menstruators that aren't women? Animals?

I support Trans rights but a lot of their rhetoric is completely incoherent from people talking about male and female brains, having the wrong body or being born with a gender. If people conclude this is nonsense and personally want to stick to recognising sexual difference that seems fair enough. 

[Juanhourjoe]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

Who are the menstruators that aren't women? Animals?

I support Trans rights but a lot of their rhetoric is completely incoherent from people talking about male and female brains, having the wrong body or being born with a gender. If people conclude this is nonsense and personally want to stick to recognising sexual difference that seems fair enough. 

Trans rights groups do seem to come out with a lot of pish. And the SNP has been a mess on this. But I think her point was pretty clear. 

Trans men would like to be accepted socially as men and menstruate. And menstruators could be seen as an offensive term to women. That's all I take from this.

[AsimButtHitsASix]

Cervical cancer death rates are far higher in transmen than ciswomen. There appears to be no link between the hormone treatment or behavioural factors. The reason is so many services are open to women but aren't to transmen. The medical literature and law, etc. specifically refers to "women". There's a weird issue now where transwomen, with no uterus or cervix, etc., have the right to get medical treatment and examinations for cancers or diseases they physically can't get and transmen can't. (ETA: AFAIK this is more of an American phenomenon than in the UK. So we might not have the disparity they do over there)

There's mounting pressure to address this issue by updating the words to be more inclusive of trans people. All the bluster about "erasing women" or "PC gone mad" is, in my opinion, less important than the mental and physical health of trans people.

Edited June 10, 2020 by AsimButtHitsASix

[welshbairn]

I thought it was back to this dictionary definition thing. So J K Rowling is demanding that post-menopausal women  should call themselves ex-women or something. It gets a bit confusing. She must be getting that way herself.

[AsimButtHitsASix]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

I thought it was back to this dictionary definition thing. So J K Rowling is demanding that post-menopausal women  should call themselves ex-women or something. It gets a bit confusing. She must be getting that way herself.

As I've argued with so many ridiculous transphobic fuds there is no binary definition of gender available. None. Every smart arse one they try has a medical exemption. Cannae get ma heid roon feminists spending the last century demanding women are not defined by their ability to procreate and then the TERFs turn up and demand they are.

[Boo Khaki]

Wow, just catching up on the news that the entire SNP has thrown the whole notion of Independence out of the window for the sake of the careers of 47 Westminster MP's and associated hingers' on.

Well f**k it, that's me a Tory now. 

[NotThePars]

7 hours ago, MixuFruit said:

The SNP absolutely are at risk of what happened to Labour and it seems to me the 'stagnant rotten party bereft of its own purpose' is the most no-brainer line of attack to take as everyone can make it.

The SNP have a clear definable goal that means their floor is far higher than Labour's. It's not wrong to suggest that a second referendum drubbing would be devastating for them even if just because it would likely precipitate a split.

2 hours ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

As I've argued with so many ridiculous transphobic fuds there is no binary definition of gender available. None. Every smart arse one they try has a medical exemption. Cannae get ma heid roon feminists spending the last century demanding women are not defined by their ability to procreate and then the TERFs turn up and demand they are.

Think of gay men that become Tories, pulling up the drawbridge.

[welshbairn]

8 hours ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

Risks are going to have to be taken at some point. 

A well calculated one will bump up the polling beyond the 55% barrier imo. A bit of dynamism is needed to overcome apathy and sense of futile impossibility.

[Ginaro]

11 hours ago, welshbairn said:

So post menopausal people should no longer call themselves women?

Only if you think that a requirement of being is a woman is being able to menstruate?

2 hours ago, Detournement said:

Who are the menstruators that aren't women? Animals?

I support Trans rights but a lot of their rhetoric is completely incoherent from people talking about male and female brains, having the wrong body or being born with a gender. If people conclude this is nonsense and personally want to stick to recognising sexual difference that seems fair enough. 

You can be a woman / (trans)woman and not menstruate, you can be a (trans)man and menstruate. The original JK Rowling tweet was about an article which talked about menstrual health and hygiene during and after the pandemic, so the entire point was to focus on that one aspect of people's health. Saying "women" would include many who don't menstruate and exclude others who do.

The trouble with this "issue" is that many people won't have an acquaintance who is trans, or even have interacted with someone who is trans (who knows, maybe they have without realising it) so they don't much experience of the issues - even worse as it's being played out on the internet/social media.

[Baxter Parp]

4 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Wow, just catching up on the news that the entire SNP has thrown the whole notion of Independence out of the window for the sake of the careers of 47 Westminster MP's and associated hingers' on.

Well f**k it, that's me a Tory now. 

Is this satire?

[Boo Khaki]

7 hours ago, Baxter Parp said:

Is this satire?

I'm changing my user name to 'WeearerapeepulRainjurs1690roolbritaniafuckthe EU', if it will fit.

Seriously though. Are we supposed to believe that every single one of those MP's, their staff, the leadership in Edinburgh, and the entire party apparatus, has just thrown the towel in and decided to jump on the gravy train simply because prospects of Indi look a bit far off at the moment?

Fair enough if the claim was that there has been a tacit admission that Indi just isn't a realistic prospect right now, so it's been quietly put on the backburner in favour of other domestic concerns, but to claim all ambition has just been chucked in the bin entirely in favour of personal pursuits is just wholly unbelievable. I think you'd have seen at the very least a handful of prominent resignations and public protestations if that were the case. Remember, there are a couple of SNP MP's who are so fiercely strident regarding all things Indi that they make the McGlashans look like boot lickers.

[Baxter Parp]

10 hours ago, Boo Khaki said:

Seriously though. Are we supposed to believe that every single one of those MP's, their staff, the leadership in Edinburgh, and the entire party apparatus, has just thrown the towel in and decided to jump on the gravy train simply because prospects of Indi look a bit far off at the moment?

Yup.  There's a lot of this pish about on twitter.