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Dougie-Dubh

Listed below are comments made by Dougie-Dubh between Tuesday, 22nd September 2009 and Monday, 30th November 2009 (13 Hours Ago) .

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Talking drink 00:24am on 30 Nov 2009 "... it shouldn't be too much a problem to present stuff which is both truthful and damning for the Labour Party. They have given plenty of such material."

Precisely!!
Talking drink 11:50pm on 29 Nov 2009 Iain Gray used his free comment on today's Politics Show to demand an apology from Alex Salmond, not just over the issue of Mike Russell's disgraced aide, but to account for what he sees as the problem of 'cybernats'.

Today's newspapers further quote him attacking 'cybernats' for "disgusting attacks not just on politicians but on journalists who don't toe the SNP line", demanding that the First Minister must "root out, and apologise for this filth".

Apart from the timing of this being deeply suspicious, Gray's assertions of course promote the twisted charade that the SNP are somehow uniquely reliant on some faceless muck-spreading campaign, the counterpart of which would be unthinkable from unionist supporters.

Against the background of a 'Scottish' media which so often blindly toes the Labour line, and an array of newspapers that perpetually issue anti-SNP propaganda and wholesale misrepresentation, I for one assert my individual right to be one of those 'cybernats' for which Gray feels Mr Salmond should apologise.

In his 'holier-than-thou' stance, does Gray take personal responsibility for every vile comment written or posted against Alex Salmond and the SNP by persons known or unknown? Or for that matter any of the despicable cariacatures posted on You Tube - of which there are more than a few?

Will Gray offer an apology for shameless demonising of the SNP by a number of unionist tabloids - some of which were distributed to polling booths - on the day of the 2007 Holyrood elections? Or for decades of smears and propaganda against the independence movement by the UK political establishment?

Or is he proposing that any blog, such as this BBC one, which evidences distinct SNP support should now be labelled 'offensive'.

The breathtaking hypocrisy in the reaction of the three main unionist parties - seeking to wholly condemn the SNP over a single rogue individual - is itself perhaps as inevitable as the deployment of yet another twisted anti-SNP media campaign on the eve of the Scottish Government's launch of the Independence Referendum white paper.

The desperate adherents of British unionism could never countenance a level playing field, after all.
Theirs is a failed and outdated concept which has no positive message, nothing to offer Scotland but the eternal begging bowl, and little to represent it other than systematic scaremongering.

We can fully expect the mud-slinging against the Independence Referendum to get dirtier than ever over the weeks and months ahead.
The plebiscite to end all plebiscites 11:16pm on 08 Oct 2009 #58 oldnat

Agreed!
The plebiscite to end all plebiscites 10:53pm on 08 Oct 2009 #22 Ed

I only pray that if any of the unionist rump at Holyrood tried to "cross the floor" to the SNP benches, that the Presiding Officer, or anyone, would pole-axe the bugger before they made it!

:)
The plebiscite to end all plebiscites 10:44pm on 08 Oct 2009 Deanthetory

When 'Call Me Dave' wasted no time in praising up the Sun over its 'conversion' from a Labour propaganda rag to a Tory one at the flick of a switch, that wasn't pathetic at all, was it??

A major coup indeed for the momentum and credibility of the Tory cause, having secured the endorsement of such a politically astute organ, and its army of discerning sheep - sorry, readers.

Although such seismic political earthquakes are rare indeed, and Cameron and the Sun have much in common - there remain important differences.

One seeks to grab the public attention with cheap headlines on a daily basis - while the other holds pretentions of being a newspaper!
Lib Dems pina colada blues 00:28am on 24 Sep 2009 I hear reported that Ming Campbell styled the 'renegade' calls amongst his party's conference delegates to back the SNP's independence referendum as some kind of indicator of the Lib Dems' 'free spirit', or some such feeble 'compliment'.

Earlier, of course, as covered here in Brian's intro, these same calls had been dismissed by Tavish Scott as fuelled by the effects of alcoholic cocktails, while these Lib Dem 'free thinkers' had been ordered not to think too much without first consulting Mike Rumbles.

It is one thing of course, for a political party to be a broad church of free thinkers - but quite another to be a disparate rabble, without a significant unifying cause, or indeed a clue, of what the party's core aims are from one minute to the next.

It all seems fundamentally founded on a fuzzy kind of "We're the nice chaps, because we're not Labour and we're not Tory" mantra.

At general elections, in Scotland at least, the Lib Dems are the party that regularly maximises the number of seats gained from a minor percentage of votes - and you really have to wonder Why??.

Their Scottish strongholds tend to be in the rural areas, of course, of which we have many, but which tend to be sparsely populated.

In the absence of a unifying 'idea', one wonders what these various constituents are actually voting for?

Is it different messages to different folks, or just the common theme that "We're just not either of the 'big two'."??

Their conference broadcast, screened this evening, could be summed up as saying that and nothing else - and Nick Clegg fancies himself as Prime Minister??!!

One might even wonder how that works in Scotland, given our '4-party system' where the other 3 parties at least have - or had - a strong sense of identity and purpose?

If the Liberals (as were) ever had a 'purpose' in Scotland, it was traditionally that they promoted themselves as 'champions of home rule' - but no longer.

Along with the other London-led unionists, they now see it as their duty not only to oppose further home rule, but to block the public right to a referendum on the matter.

To this voter, that smacks severely, not only of a betrayal of both liberalism and democracy, but of posturing arrogance from a confused group of political apologists without a cause.

The Lib Dems really need to get a grip on who and what they are: - a mature, committed political party with a viable mission statement, or a 'nice people's' pressure group whose nuclear purpose is to exert peripheral influence on the 'big two' at Westminster.
Lib Dems pina colada blues 3:53pm on 23 Sep 2009 #212 Bromnedov

Notice your direct challenge to one typically vacuous, unsubstantiated assertion was predictably answered by yet another typically vacuous, unsubstantiated, and contradictory, assertion.

Classic 'giggler' behaviour, sadly.

Shallow, attention-seeking and deluded.
Anti-Glasgow? 2:25pm on 23 Sep 2009 #445 Northhighlander

I think even you will recognise that you posted on the wrong thread here.

If I may respond, however:

Of course the SNP did not win an outright majority.
The way in which the Parliament's membership structure was constituted, largely in the political interests of the Labour party, was intended to obstruct any single party, but specifically the SNP, from ever winning an outright majority.

Had that not been so tainted by Labour expediency at the outset, it would actually be a good and healthy thing that the Parliament operated on the basis of consensus, as opposed to the writ of one party.

However, Labour in particular have also seen to it that our Parliament has aped Westminster by adopting up many of its most objectionable habits and procedures - not just the 'yah-boo!' oppositional mentality, but the very act of governing through a majority coalition, as was the pattern set throughout the first eight years.

It has also been paramount amongst the London-led parties that the writ and authority of Westminster must take precedence and be protected at all times, with the views of the Scottish people a poor second to that objective.

This, of course, was the Parliament's function and role under the Labour-LibDem administrations of these first eight years.

Now, even in the new and dynamic political landscape, where any 'democrat' worthy of the label should be upholding the democratic say of the people, particularly in our 'consensus-driven' Parliament, the unionist parties are nothing if not thoroughly exposed as putting political self-interest ahead of the will of the Scottish people - who have an inalienable entitlement to decide their own future through their own 'democratic' Parliament.

The SNP are not asking any unionist party to vote for independence, but to support the people's right to decide - although it very much suits the unionist agenda to crassly conflate the two.
This makes a mockery of any party's claim to be 'democratic', quite apart from those who style themselves as 'Liberal Democrats'!

As for recent tests of public opinion, the SNP's 29 percent at the Euros was the highest percentage gained by any party, including the Tories in England.

That is no mean success, however hard it may be for a blinkered unionist to swallow.
Where next on Megrahi? 1:20pm on 23 Sep 2009 Why is the Holyrood Justice Committee now to hold a further inquiry into the release of Abdelbaset al Megrahi - because the decision was controversial???

That, surely, was wholly inevitable, as was the reaction to the fate of the prisoner in these particular circumstances.

Was 'US disapproval' in itself ever a reason to prevent the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds, in accordance with the provisions of Scottish Law?

Many of the SNP's opponents who contrived to politicise the decision in order to condemn it, based their case on the assertion that it was.

While the decision itself received strong support from many respected quarters, including some victims' relatives, international opinion and figures including Nelson Mandela - the pressure applied by the US, in particular the behaviour of the head of the FBI following the decision, has since been exposed as wholly manipulative.

Now, while Gordon Brown continues to expediently evade the question of whether or not he agreed with the release, the US government has acted with international maturity to 'draw a line' under the release, stating that the Scottish Justice Secretary was, of course, fully entitled to make the decision he did, in line with due Scottish legal process - a move which should also serve to quell the spurious notions of 'international outrage' and projected 'backlash' against Scotland and Scottish produce, which have shown themselves to be little other than mythical spectres fabricated and exploited as weapons of expediency by the SNP's opportunist opponents.

Those same opponents, who politicised the decision and deployed these 'spectres', including a one-sided misrepresentaton of Scottish public opinion, to mount a witch-hunt against the Justice Secretary, and to counter his act of humanitarian compassion with a declaration of cynical mistrust, portraying a Scottish Parliament cowed and brought to heel by its immaturity and indecisiveness in the face of its own unfounded fears - include the very unionist MSPs who comprise the bulk of the Justice Committee.

We should not expect their latest 'verdict' to be objective or edifying.
Anti-Glasgow? 11:17pm on 22 Sep 2009 #441 gigglefit

Congratulations on putting the following beyond doubt.

i) You can neither answer questions nor support any of your twisted, agenda-driven assertions.

ii) Your knowledge of Edinburgh's basic geography, as well as the tram project, is as poor as your grasp of basic facts.

iii) You persist in seeking to target the SNP, not only with the blame for a project they have consistently opposed, but through any opportunist link or association, however tenuous, partisan, irrelevant or discredited.

iv) Your talents begin and end with cherry-picking selective lines from any expedient source of comment or opinion, but do not extend to mounting a coherent argument, nor, in most cases, even following the article or story through to its conclusion - in place of which is invaribly inserted your own self-spun conclusion

- because that's your sole raison d'etre - isn't it???

Meanwhile, a highly thought-provoking dicussion (albeit populated as ever by a majority of committed and articulate supporters of independence) is taking place on the 'pina colada blues' thread, punctured only by the occasional emission of low-level froth from you and you alone.

Fortunately, for the most part, genuine participants continue to simply ignore your numbingly predictable and negative incursions, in keeping with the original and correct assessment that you are nothing other than a parasitic troll.

Having seen that assessment confirmed beyond doubt, I too now leave you to your giggles and your loner anger.

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