Farage gets Bum's Rush from Edinburgh: "They even hate the union jack."

Nigel Farage, the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader, found himself in retreat on Thursday evening as dozens of protesters hounded him out of central Edinburgh.

Farage was finally whisked away in a police riot van under a tirade of abuse from a crowd of about 50 young demonstrators – students, anti-racist campaigners and activists in the 'Radical Independence' movement – after being forced to retreat not once, twice or three times, but four times. Farage was first forced out of the Canon's Gait pub on the Royal Mile after the landlord took fright as the demonstrators disrupted his casual press conference with shouts of "racist", "scum" and "homophobe".

Out on the street, as the fingers pointed and taunts escalated, he was rejected by one taxi and turfed out of a second. Then, finally, the harassed and ill-prepared handful of officers were forced to push him back into the Canon's Gait, slamming its front doors shut, as the demonstrators chanted: "Nigel, you're a bawbag, Nigel you're a bawbag, na, na, na, hey!" with gusto.

The etched sign above the Canon Gait's door read: "Enjoy your visit."

With further verses of "Ukip scum, off our streets" echoing in his ears, Farage was bustled into a police van under the glare of television camera lights. After gamely attempting to argue back, trying to hit back at the repeated accusations of racism and homophobia with protests of innocence, Farage finally had to admit his surprise.

"We've never, ever, ever had this kind of response. Is this a kind of anti-English thing? It could be," he said to a reporter. It wasn't. Not entirely. The protesters disagreed. Many said they were there to protest at Ukip's stance on immigration and the political backgrounds of Ukip's motley collection of local council candidates; others were there to protest against his party's obscure economic policies.

There was no violence, no punches thrown, no missiles lobbed. Rachel, a young woman in a wheelchair who had wheeled herself on to the Royal Mile to blockade the second taxi Farage tried to take, said simply: "Ukip are just bullshit."

Some were independence campaigners there to remind him of his nationality: after one, standing just a few feet from Farage, invited the Ukip leader to "shove your union jack up your arse", a flustered Farage said: "Clearly this is anti-British, anti-English. They even hate the union jack."

Farage had arrived at the Canon's Gait in buoyant mood, planning for his long-denied breakthrough into Scottish politics. Compared to the near-25% support in the English local elections, the highest his party has ever polled in Scotland is 5.2% in the 2009 European elections; in many others, Ukip support rests at under 1%.

The latest Ipsos Mori opinion poll, published in early May, found that just two Scots out of 1,001 would vote Ukip. He was hoping for a quiet, convivial briefing – hopefully with pint in hand – with the Scottish political press corps. This was to be the official launch of Ukip's campaign for the Holyrood parliamentary seat of Aberdeen Donside – a seat held very comfortably by the Scottish National party. "We've proved we can get votes in Wales, England and Northern Ireland, We're still untested in Scotland," he said.

"We've not had an opportunity to test Ukip policies with the Scottish people for a very long time." Asked about Ukip's chances, he was optimistic. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if we did quite creditably."

Less than 30 minutes after speaking those words, the MEP for South-East Counties was sitting hunched on the rear seat of a police riot van being driven off at speed, his plans to introduce Otto Inglis, Ukip's ever hopeful candidate for the Scottish parliament byelection on 20 June, forgotten.

Farage calls Scottish activist protesters ‘fascist scum’

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has described protesters who besieged him in an Edinburgh pub as "fascist scum".

Mr Farage had to be escorted from the Canons' Gait pub in a police van after angry confrontations on Thursday.

He told BBC Scotland the incident was deeply racist and displayed a total hatred of the English.

Mr Farage called on Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond to condemn the behaviour. The SNP said the UKIP leader had "lost the plot".

Mr Farage hung up during a telephone interview with the Good Morning Scotland programme on BBC Radio Scotland after being pressed about his lack of knowledge of Scottish politics and the low level of support for his party north of the border.

He later described the interview as "insulting".

Listen to it here and decide for yourself:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22566180

First Minister Alex Salmond said that Mr Farage's accusation of a "hate campaign" from the BBC during the radio interview showed it would be a "great mistake" to take "somebody of that mentality with any degree of seriousness".

Mr Salmond added: "We can frankly do without UKIP, who dislike everybody and know absolutely nothing about Scotland."

When asked if he condemned the demonstration against Mr Farage, the first minister said: "If there's been any law-breaking - and that's yet to be established - then obviously we condemn that, as we always do in Scotland, but you've got to get things into context.

"A student demonstration isn't the Dreyfus trial."

He should accept reality and declare himself an 'English nationalist' which is precisely what he is. @engyesscotland@nigel_farage
— Joe Middleton (@freescotlandnow) May 18, 2013

Nigel Farage's Scottish hounding was an antidote to fawning media treatment | Mike Small gu.com/p/3gva8/tw via @guardian
— Morna Simpson (@girlgeeks) May 18, 2013

UKIP have always been out of touch and patronising towards Scotland as I found when I spoke with a UKIP Euro MP on the radio after the SNP's first election victory in the Scottish parliament (see post below this) - JM.

Can Scotland escape the killer zombies?

Iain MacWhirter

Columnist

Sunday 24 February 2013

 

LIKE me, you probably don't pay too much attention to the monthly unemployment figures, since they don't seem to be going anywhere in particular.

LIKE me, you probably don't pay too much attention to the monthly unemployment figures, since they don't seem to be going anywhere in particular.

     

In fact, something quite extraordinary is happening, which is transforming the world of work, making a nonsense of Government policies such as the much-criticised Work Programme and turning a once prosperous and relatively secure society into one driven by insecurity and debt. It also poses a very serious question about Scotland's future.

      

You see, UK unemployment – at 2.5 million – is a lot lower than it should be. Indeed, the number of those out of work has been falling even as the country heads into a triple-dip recession. Unemployment rose to 8% in November 2011 and has been falling more or less ever since. Yet, in the recession of the 1980s, which was mild compared to this one, unemployment rose to 12% and stayed there.

Stranger still, unemployment in Scotland has been running at a lower rate than the UK.
This month, 7.7% of Scots were out of work, against 7.8% for the UK. In the 1980s, unemployment in Scotland soared to 15% – almost double what it is today and far ahead of the rest of the UK. Indeed it was nearer 18% in the west, as Scotland's industrial heartlands were ripped out and thrown on the scrapheap. So, although this recession has lasted twice as long as the 1980s' and is far deeper, unemployment is falling when it should be rising.

This is all exceedingly strange, because I defy anyone to look around Scotland today and regard it as a country in economic recovery – despite the claims made by the Scottish Government, which can't seem to decide whether Scotland is being dragged down by UK Chancellor George Osborne's austerity or being held aloft by Alex Salmond's Plan McB.

What has happened is something we haven't seen in Britain since the 19th century: a productivity recession, in which the economy is going back in time. The reason unemployment hasn't increased is largely because people are accepting lower wages. Pay (except, of course, for bankers) has been falling by 1% per year, in real terms, which may not sound like much, but equates to about £1500 in reduced income for average households so far, and earnings will continue to fall until 2018 at least. This is unprecedented. Firms are using cheap labour instead of new machines – which is why productivity is falling in Britain. We're getting poorer by making ourselves less efficient. This is why high-street shops have been closing and Britain isn't recovering through exports, despite the fall in the value of the pound.

This only sounds counter-intuitive because our political culture is still essentially neo-liberal and assumes that, if you hold down wages, the economy must do better. In fact, quite the reverse is true. Low wages breed economic stagnation because worker-consumers lack money to buy goods and firms have no incentive to apply new techniques and machinery because labour is so cheap. That's why this depression is unlike any during the past 140 years. You have to go back to the 1870s to find a recession as long and as deep – although even then, industrial output continued to grow through the application of new technologies. Today's Coalition policies are taking us back to the days when people wore top hats and the Government was run by ex-public schoolboys. Oh, I forgot, it still is.

In all previous recessions this century – and this includes the 1930s – recovery has come through consumer spending led by housebuilding. In the 1930s, the recession ended as a result of a building boom in the southeast of England, plus new consumer industries such as radios and cars. This time around, housebuilding has been falling year on year and is at its lowest levels since the second world war. Britain has largely opted out of the productivity race because firms have been told that the falling value of the pound will boost British exports by making them cheaper. But that only works if the economy is producing something that other countries want to buy. All Britain has produced in the last decade is debt, and the rest of the world has plenty of that.

So it's hardly surprising that the Government's Work Programme is failing. Equipping workers for employment – quite reasonable in its own way – can only succeed when there is a buoyant labour market, with lots of turnover, to create openings, and that isn't happening. We have a cobweb labour market, with lots of under-employed workers hanging around in companies that would be out of business were it not for near-zero interest rates and the low pound. There are a million extra part-time jobs, mainly among male employees, plus 4.2 million self-employed – mostly redundant workers who have set up on their own and are staying alive through the burgeoning "cash-only" black economy. There are also nearly a million people of pension age still working.

We've heard of zombie households, which can't pay their debts and are only surviving because of near-zero interest rates and forbearance by the banks. We also have thousands of zombie companies that would go out of business the moment interest rates returned to normal. On top of them, we have the zombie banks, which only cling on to existence because the Government is printing money and guaranteeing the value of their bad debts. So it won't surprise you to learn that the UK is turning into a zombie country, which is about to lose its credit rating.

And the only remedy the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, can offer is yet more inflation. The euphemism currently employed by the governor, who has missed his inflation target for the last four years, is that we have to "see through" high inflation, to the sunny uplands beyond. But there aren't any. Inflation applied to a stagnant economy will only lead to further falls in consumer spending, as wages are eroded by the rising cost of imports. Fuel and energy are rising at 10% year-on-year even though Scotland is sitting on massive energy reserves.

There is a third way. Scotland could conceivably depart from this by becoming independent, using its natural resources – oil and green energy – to develop a high-value economy based on Scotland's lead in higher education. We have more top universities than France. There's no guarantee, of course, and some might regard it as morally wrong for Scotland to cut adrift from the zombie UK.

But Scotland bailed out the UK economy in the 1980s with Scottish oil revenues, and received precious little in return except factory closures and the highest mortality rates in Europe. And it doesn't take a genius to see that any improvement in the UK economy is going to happen in London and the southeast, rather than in Scotland. Like the high-speed rail link, it might eventually extend to Manchester but no further. Scotland is on its own whether it likes it or not. A very big choice for those in and out of work.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/can-scotland-escape-the-killer-zombies.20312845

TV debate farce is an undemocratic disgrace

There is a lot of anger about this on Twitter and other social networking sites. No wonder, it is an undemocratic disgrace that the political views of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall can be completely and utterly ignored.

British Citizenship did nothing for Gary McKinnon

A Scots computer hacker, Gary McKinnon is being deported to the US. McKinnon who suffers from Asbergers syndrome is likely to receive 70 years for 'terrorism' offences.

In actual fact all he did was expose some lapses in US security in his search for cover-ups on alien encounters. As a British citizen you would expect McKinnon would receive some support from his home Government.

No, Britain decided that it couldn't care less about the Scot. The US was much more important to them and they couldn't care less if his rights to a fair trial were breached.

Sadly that attitude was also shared by the European Court of Human Rights.

It's clear that in McKinnon's case British citizenship was worth nothing.

Perhaps it's time to give Scotland a shot at representing Scots abroad.

A proud moment from political Olympic history

At the 1906 Athens Games, the Irish Gaelic Athletic Association sent a national Irish team, including Peter O'Connor, whose world record in the long jump stood for 20 years. But when they got to Athens, the British objected to having separate Irish representation and the party were allowed to compete only as part of the British team.

However, O'Connor, an Irish patriot, got his own back. At the medal ceremony for the long jump, he scaled the flag pole, pulled down the Union flag, and hoisted the green flag of Eire. Officials who tried to stop him were held off by Irish and Irish-American athletes and supporters.

This is from an interesting article from George Kerevan it was up in full but sadly the people at the Scotsman are now excluding it from public view.

Why should Murray want to be English?!

Post on the Scotsman:

The Scotsman has claimed that Murray has given up on Scotland but it's not actually true. They've said he's a new 'British bulldog' - don't make me boak. Is the Scotsman that desperate to create a pro-British story? Just because he got pictured with a flag? (probably handed to him by some Unionist hack desperate to get that pic!)Why does he have to make loads of humiliating declarations about how much he loves the English when he should just be concentrating on his game? Why is it even an issue? The last time he was at Wimbledon everyone cheered for the English players and after they went out they cheered for him, that was with his saltire armbands.

This year some supposedly 'quality' papers would prefer it if he forgot about being Scottish altogether! Sad, sad very sad and it says a lot about the Scotsman that it won't allow any Scot to be a success without the frankly sickening garbage of claiming them as a British bulldog, fair enough mention he's British if you MUST (for the moment anyway) but this cr*p is well OTT.

Brown has hurt Scotland by becoming PM, we won't get another and his boot licking of England and the Union Jack now means that England expects everyone to do it. Murray should have told them all to f*ck off. When we are independent our sportsmen will be treated with respect and won't be put through this obstacle course of abasing themselves before the glory of greater England. It's pathetic and it's not based on any actual remarks by Murray who said he would NOT be wearing any 'union jack head bands' which suggests that he remains a Scot first and foremost even if the sad hacks want to pretend otherwise.

Come out for independence Andy and kick everyone's a*se next year - even if everyone in 'SW1' hates your guts. It worked for McEnroe. - JPM

---------------

The disgusting remarks about Murray have reached their zenith with this sh*te from Tony Parsons. I don't think for a moment that Murray desires to be English, why the hell should he? However you can see that the hacks are confused since they can't tell the difference between Britishness and Scottishness themselves, don't worry Tony it will be spelt out politically soon enough.

Opinion: Tony Parsons on why Andy Murray doesn't represent England

Mirror columnist Tony Parsons wrote he wouldn't be supporting Andy Murray at Wimbledon after the Scot's anti-English remarks during the last World Cup. But would witnessing Murray's astonishing performance at first hand change his mind?

As fate would have it I was at Centre Court on Monday when Andy Murray staged one of the greatest sporting comebacks of all time against highly strung Frenchman Buster le Gasket.
Some say that the French have surrender in their bones, but this is grotesquely unfair to Andy Murray. Like several million other Englishmen I have never warmed to the dour Scot who they call Gordon Brown's lovechild.

However nobody should take anything away from what Murray did in the twilight of a Wimbledon day. He was awesome, he was magnificent, but I can't pretend I've suddenly fallen in love with the fiery Scot. His anti-English remarks cannot be forgotten so easily. No doubt there are other Englishmen and women who will feel differently because everyone loves a winner but despite his incredible performance on Monday I still can't confuse him with Bobby Moore.

I started that five set marathon cheering for the Frenchman and I ended up cheering for Murray. It would have been churlish, petty and mean-spirited to do anything else.
What I can't do is pretend Andy Murray represents me and my country.

I don't think that his remarks about England in the World Cup, when he said he would support anyone but England, were a joke I think he still feels that way and I think there are millions of people that still feel that way.

There are some people who just don't like the English, and I believe in my marrow that Murray is one of them. That's fine. Wimbledon is not really about flagwaving. Ultimately a tennis player represents no one but himself. They are as lonely as boxers.

Murray has already had an incredibly successful Wimbledon.

Whatever happens against Nadal he can be proud of himself, Scotland can be proud of him and Britain can be proud of him. But that doesn't mean we have to like him. Murray is the best thing we've seen in years in what is the most English of sports.

I am sorry that he made those stupid and insensitive remarks earlier in his career, and though he'd never admit it, I bet he is too. Viva Espana.

--- What is incredible is that this w*nker feels everyone must *automatically* support England at football! We Scots don't expect England fans to support us, or French Fans or United States fans. Then again we are not imperialist supremacists. That's the difference. To Parsons we are colonials - well it won't be for ever buddy.

Scots lawyers must have liberty to attack injustice

The trial of Aamer Anwar for contempt of court which begins tomorrow at the High Court in Edinburgh has huge implications for the type of society that we wish to live in.

This case takes place in the shadow of a war in Iraq which was carried out without the sanction of the United Nations. It happened in revenge for an unconnected act of violence which was in itself blowback for various intelligence operations which failed. Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset trained to fight the soviets in Afghanistan who eventually realised that the US was as large an enemy to his and his fellow rebels interests as the Soviets.

His network believes it is fighting an all out war against the military occupation of the Middle East, a modern crusade by Christianity against Islam. The war is real, the consequences are real and the threat to our civil liberties in this country is very real as well. Already the right to a fair trial (Habeus Corpus) has been undermined with a pre trial dentention period of one month during which time anyone can be held on suspicion. Not content with the longest period of detention in the western world Labour wants to extend this to 42 days.

ID cards are being pushed through the UK parliament on the back of terrorist threats yet the Goverment has admitted in correspondence that they would have no significant effect on terrorism whatsoever!

On the front line of often badly drawn and regressive legislation which can give suspects an effective life sentence for publishing seditious material on the internet are the human rights lawyers. One in particular, Aamer Anwar is treading the balance between what is right to protect society and the human rights of his client. Sadly the state has decided that it not only doesn't like the actions of his clients, it doesn't like what he says in defence of them.

This is extremely worrying. To ensure our justice system works effectively all lawyers must have complete liberty to attack any decision which they believe adversely affects their client or is injurious to civil rights in general. this should particularly apply in the case of lawyers fighting high profile human rights cases based on new legislation.

In Scotland we like to believe we have a decent respect for human rights. Sadly that respect is not shared by the British Government which has been extremely cavalier about European human rights legislation and has in consequence experienced a whole series of judicial reverses because of badly framed legislation and attempted abuse of executive powers.

If this case is successful then in the future lawyers might rightly fear the consequences of pursuing difficult cases and fully expressing their opinions if they are going to be threatened with a subsequent appearance in the dock themselves once their trials are over. If even a popular, widely celebrated and respected Scottish lawyer like Aamer Anwar can be convicted on these charges in a Scottish court then in future the truth will only be what the British state says it is.

That's not good enough in these dangerous and volatile times.

Song for the Labour Party

The working class will now be conned
To believe the union is still strong.
For the Scots they want their oil and gas
But we cannot give them what they ask.
The time has come to think again
If Brown's to stay in Number Ten.
But as we don't want Party schism
We won't have changes, just revision.

We can't forget Nye Bevan's ghost
But yuppies votes are uppermost.
We can't indulge in Leftist dreams
We must appeal to Milton Keynes.
The time has come to think again
If Brown's to stay in Number Ten.
But as we don't want Party schism
We won't have changes, just revision.

The people's flag is deepest grey
Because we get more votes that way.
Who gives a damn for socialism
If all looks good on television.
The time has come to think again
If Brown's to stay in Number Ten.
But as we don't want Party schism
We won't have changes, just revision.

(very good!)

SAME NONSENSE BY BLIAR FOR WALES

Blair: Independence is backward

INDEPENDENCE for Wales and Scotland would be an old-fashioned backward step, Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday - while claiming his own legacy was to make Britain a more modern place.

[A backward step? More like a necessary step which every former colony of the British Empire has made and none have regretted! Independence is not 'backward' for Wales or Scotland. As Jack Straw has pointed out the union is useful for England but it is not useful for Scotland or Wales, both of whom would benefit from independent representation in the EU and the UN. JOE]

Mr Blair has been under pressure on the constitutional issue after a series of polls showed growing support among the English for the break-up of the UK, and a surge in support for the SNP in Scotland.

But Mr Blair told a Westminster lunch that autonomy for the nations of the UK was "a completely regressive step, totally wrong and totally contrary to where the modern world is moving, which is countries moving together."

Using his own background to stress the "interdependence" point used repeatedly by Chancellor Gordon Brown, Mr Blair said, "My mum was Irish, my Dad was English, both lived most of their lives in Scotland. I was born in Scotland but brought up in County Durham, and I now live most of my life down in London. [Who cares? Blair's allegiance is to England, fair enough, but can he not realise that others put Scotland or Wales first?]

"It's a good newspaper story - You have an opinion poll question to people saying 'Scotland have got their own parliament, should England have its own parliament?'
"I would be kind of surprised if people didn't answer that question 'yes'.
"But to then take it a step further and say they want to bust up the United Kingdom; I don't think they want to bust-up the UK." [Pity that's exactly what the polls say Tony.]

An ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph which suggested support for Scottish independence had reached 52% among Scots and 59% in England. And a poll in yesterday's Scotsman suggest the SNP was on course to be the largest party in the Scottish parliament after next May.

Mr Blair said he recalled similar poll results being published in the summer of 1998, which were not reflected in the results of the 1999 Welsh and Scottish elections.
"When people come to the point of do they want to bust up the UK, I don't think they want to do that," he said. "I'm not saying these aren't difficult arguments that you have to handle carefully, because you do, but I think independence would be a thoroughly old-fashioned and regressive step."

The Prime Minister has said he will step down before next September, but would not be drawn on his departure date when questioned by reporters yesterday. Asked about his biggest mistakes since entering 10 Downing Street in 1997, he hinted they might not include issues such as the Iraq war.

"If people ask me what's your biggest mistakes, I always say 'that's for me to know and you to find out'. Although they may, funnily enough not be some of the things you might think of," he said. He added, "I think the thing that has changed about the country overall is that I think the country is basically more willing to advance people on merit today, and ... I think we've become a far more modern country."

Returning to his theme of the regions [Scotland and Wales are COUNTRIES not regions], he said, it was wrong to always compare areas such as Wales or the north-east of England with London, saying there had been strong economic growth throughout the UK

"Part of the trouble with comparing region by region is, if you take London for example, you have some of the wealthiest parts of Britain and some of the poorest. It's more sensible to analyse disparities within regions rather than pitting regions against each other."