Golf Tango Foxtrot

...readers can expect a bittae mair action on this Blog...these are interesting times as they say...

Apologies for the length of time since the last post on GTF but life gets in the wye yi ken...? I wis reading an article in the Guardian HERE thi ithir day..(well tae be fair I dinna BUY thi Guardian, I follow links that folk post on Twitter)   It purports to say that the First Minister of Scotland will not call another Independence Referendum in Scotland without the "permission" of the Westminster Government granting a "Section 30 Order". I'm pretty sure the First Minister (and I'm not an uncritical believer) said no such thing. Its worth looking at what a Section 30 Order actually IS. It's not "permission" for Scotland to hold an Independence Referendum.  Its an agreement by both governments (Westminster and Holyrood) to respect the result.  That's what happened with the last Section 30 Order in 2012 which kicked off the campaign for the 2014 Referendum.   David Cameron's Tory Government supported a  Section 30 Order in 2...

Labour's "resurgence" in Scotland comes from voters keen to support Corbyn in the belief that he represents new and socially radical policies. Scottish Labour have spent the last two years miscrying Corbyn at every opportunity.  The ungrateful Dugdale and Murray persist in thinking they've won seats by being the minor partner in the unionist machine rather than opportunistically gaining votes garnered for them by a leader they hate. They continue to be the third party in Scotland. They continue to be the "Fakers" that John Maclean called them in the 1920s. The Tory "victories" are simply unionist votes. The unionists ran an anti-indy campaign.  they talked about nothing else. They had a free field of fire. The SNP and other pro-indy forces did not run a pro-indy campaign.  This was the dog that didn't bark.  Despite the one-sidedness of the campaign (and the relentless buy in to the premise by 95% of the media) the unionists failed. ...

Scotland sometimes congratulates itself on being free from conventional far-right extremists like the National Front and the British National Party.   One of the reasons this is so is because this ground is already occupied by the Orange Order and their hangers-on. A collection of (very few) religious zealots, the wannabe (and actual) Loyalist paramilitaries down to the assorted mob of lumpen wine swillers who follow the Order's walks and who even the Lodge disdain. As a corollary the only places where the BNP and NF have managed to historically have a presence in Scotland is in places where t he Order was kicked out long ago. These are the forces who can always be relied on to provide the bully-boys to intimidate and divide the working class (and Indy) movements. The classic function of Fascism.  The Order says that at least six of its members "and many more friends of the Order" have been elected as councillors in the May 2015 Scottish Council elections.   An...

In my time I have owned three reasonable collections of vinyl records.   All of them were lost on the shoals of life.   Breakups, poverty and emigration for the most part.   I have resisted the temptation to return to vinyl as a post-modern fad but I have over the years picked up some records with a view to eventually getting round to buying something to actually play them on. My listening devices have spanned 50 years.  From a Dansette Gramophone as they were called, to the early cassette players, to a Midi system, to a Walkman, a CD player, the MiniDisc player, MP3 device and now often enough listening online on my PC or phone. Recently I saw a deal on eBay for a device to actually play records.  It was a bargain. £15. Now at that price you don't expect HiFi sound quality.  You don't get it either.   At any rate it is no worse than the auld Dansette (I wish I still had it), of which I see examples going at £200 these days. The ...

Delivered as a speech to the Arbroath Declaration Commemoration April 9th 2017 "Welcome to Arbroath those from further afield from Radical Independence Campaign Angus & Mearns I was told I had tae make a speech today a while ago and I put off writing it till this morning, there's been so much going on in the world. I promise I won't be long as I've sat through too many boring harangues in the past from people who should know better. These are interesting times to live in as the ancient curse goes. I have been coming to this event for years and never has the alignment of history been more in our favour. Those of us for whom Independence is not an end but a beginning have every reason for optimism. Independence is coming. The dogs on the street and even the Bookies know it!! More and more we see the old Labour Party, the party of the aristocrats of labour being disowned by people who can now see through their falsehoods. Who see them i...

  On joining the EU Spain suspended it's territorial claim to Gibraltar and opened the border.   Now that Westminster seems hell bent on dragging Gibraltar ( and Scotland) out of an EU to which Gibraltar (and Scotland) voted to remain it should be no surprise that on Brexit Spain will close the border and renew it's territorial claim.   Old vampires like Michael Howard are now discussing war with Spain. This used to be called "sabre-rattling".  The warmongers should (and do) know that the Royal Navy wouldn't have a hope defending Gibraltar short of nuking Madrid so run down is it's non-WMD capability.    The mainstay surface ship Type 45 Destroyers keep breaking down.  Perhaps they could be towed to Gibraltar to act as a deterrent? They were so unreliable they had to be withdrawn from the "Falkland" Islands.  They were also plagued with propulsion problems in the Gulf.   Given the impotence of Westminster to actually threaten another ...