Just one thing, Arlene pet, don’t think of bringing your narrow-minded beliefs to Scotland. Come by all means, but leave the bigotry and hatred, along with the orange kit, at passport control. We live in the 21st century here, we are open and welcoming, regardless of creed, colour, gender, sexuality, age, ability, or anything else. We know that’s not your party’s way. We should also probably warn you that our part in your united kingdom is moving towards its final days, so if it’s the queen, beefeaters, house of lords and great British “values” you’re looking for, I doubt if you’d like the way we are moving. Still, I hope you’ll leave Ireland. I’ve always seen you people as part of the problem and not part of the solution.
What have seagulls ever done to you?
The Scotsman 5th July 2014:
“Several people on Twitter reported disruption in the city during the walk. One Glasgow resident tweeted: “Orange March is chaos around my flat. Walk home see 3 casualties, 2 arrests and a man punch a seagull.” “
Wouldn’t she and her crew of oddballs and misfits not be happier in Ascension or South Georgia? No permanent populations for them to try to make miserable.
Absolutely not South Georgia, and not Ascension either! I mean, I wouldn’t like to be biffed on the beak by an orangeman – or even an orangeperson – either, so I don’t see why innocent, and probably atheistic, wildlife should be subjected to such gratuitous violence.
The area round the South Pole is pretty free of wildlife, but I would worry about them polluting a pristine environment. It’s a thorny question and a complex conundrum, really: where can you put a waste of space, and what can you do with it afterwards?
I was going to suggest Pitcairn, but it’s been bedevilled by unwholesome goings-on in recent years.
On second thoughts, might be perfect for them given their history of Iris Robinson and the DUP MLA who was a freelance hymn singer with a penchant for bidy-building masseurs in hotel rooms.
Pitcairn should be paradise for them.
When we have a mass migration too Scotland from Ireland, as in the Famines, this time of Proddies, we will know the game is up for Westminster, as that will their last and legacy card.
Whatever happens in Ireland as a result of Brexit,the DUP are going to be held responsible.
If,as seems likely,NI is allowed to remain an EU enclave,their hard line “anything but Irish” supporters will be very unhappy bunnies.
On the other hand,should a hard border return to divide the island,moderates will blame them for the economic and social chaos that will result.
Arlene and friends had better salt Westminstet’s bung away in some tax haven and prepare to jump ship come the day,England comes to mind.
This “If Ireland reunifies I’ll leave” trope or schtick has its echo of course in “If Scotland becomes independent I’ll leave”, and the psychology is quite evidently the same. My point is that I simply do not understand it. It’s up there with other such bonkers assertions as “Scotland cannot become independent because then my children in England would become foreigners”.
Of the seven or eight countries I’ve lived in in my life I have always been my Scottish self and everyone else has been their Austrian or Spanish or Kenyan or French or American or Tanzanian selves, and it’s never bothered me a bit as I would never have expected them to be anything else, and my status then was much more foreign than any Scottish Unionist’s or Ulster “Loyalist”‘s would be in an independent Scotland or a united Ireland – Unionists and Loyalists would still be in the same place, in the same society, surrounded by the same people, and they would still have all their democratic and civil rights.
To put it another way, what is wrong with these people?
I have always thought that the “If Scotland becomes independent I’ll leave” schtick was an empty threat. Where would they go? The rest of the world consists of foreigners. Kind of by definition.
The obvious point to make is that the world outside Scotland’s or even the UK’s borders is a fascinating place.
These foreigners have art and science, intelligent commentary on the issues of the day, solutions to some of our problems, I am in the Lesley Riddoch camp when it comes to that. I see London as a ‘black hole’ that drags us all into it’s orbit, and not in a good way.
It seems to me that the relative silence on whether Brexit was stolen, as compared to the kick-back about the Trump win, suggests that our democracy has already been compromised. It is odd, is it not, that a referendum, which may have been manipulated is not the subject of furious debate.
A cannae, A wullnae an A’m no gonnae – talk you down, I mean.
The most significant difference between the stolen election / stolen referendum affairs in the US and the UK is, I believe, the role of the meeja. In the States, there is still some real, independent, investigative journalism going on, whereas in the UK, the messaging is under the control of the Establishment in the broadest sense. Given that the meeja is controlled, in the main, by a coterie of right-wing meeja barons who are unfriendly to Europe, a symbiotic / parasitic political class, and a Tory party that is explosively close to splitting on the Europe issue and is terrified of exposing the deep divisions within itself…
… and because you cannot talk about stolen elections and referendums in either the US or the UK without mentioning Russia, and mentioning Russia in such a context seems to bring an extraordinary number of people out in hives.
Well Tris
You are such a great comfort to baroness moany that you could get the baroness to put arlene up at the mayfair appartment.
That would be your good deed for the century.
If you were in with lizzie the last maybe one of her rooms would be available.
O/T reports today that the royal wedding cake has been hit with the sugar tax, the cakes for the big wedding are to cost £FIFTY THOUSAND, 8 of them needed, as my buddy says, “Whats wrong with Creigs”
I expect they stick their pinkies oot as they shovel their cake into their cake-holes, whereas we plebs dinnae bother because we’re far too busy cramming it in before some other bugger can grab it … ah yes, of course, when I were a lad, we got a chocolate digestive between the four of us no more than once a month, and only if we were extremely well behaved, very lucky, and had passed no objectionable remarks about our elders and betters at any time within living memory…
She wouldn’t mind them so much if they were orange aliens, probably. If they’re aliens, can they still be predestined to be Presbyterians? I Think We Should Be Told!
P.S. The meenister at the kirk I was obliged to attend in my prepubescent youth, kilt and camelhair coat, for reasons of maternal snobbery, was a cold fish, actually a rather nasty piece of work. Years later, when I was languishing in one of the local hospitals – I do a very impressive languish – he came to give me a pastoral visit. Apart from a brief greeting and the “How are you?”, to which I replied “Not too good right at the moment” – I had an impressive number of tubes sticking out of me, or into me depending on your point of view – his contribution was “Well, I expect you’ll feel better soon”. And that was it. He turned on his heel, and walked off without saying goodbye.
Later, a Catholic priest showed up – an eccentric old fellow, he had his biretta on squint, and his glasses weren’t exactly horizontal either – and said, by way of greeting, “Och, you don’t look very well at all! Are you alright?”, and we took the conversation from there. At one point, in a spirit of full disclosure, I said “I have to tell you, Father, I’m not one of yours”, in response to which he swivelled his eyes left, and swivelled them right, then leaned in close and said very quietly “Well, I won’t tell God if you don’t”, which had the desired effect of making me laugh, and God did I need it right then.
Alert readers may have noticed by now that I cannot thole sectarianism in general and Scottish and Nornirish orangery in particular, indeed anyone who insists on behaving as if religious wars were still the latest fashion in civil and geopolitical strife. Actually, I was never much at risk of going down with bigotry anyway, but that priest would have successfully immunized me against it even if I had been, I think.
Some of them (particularly the fie and brimstone ones) are fearsome characters. You think… Jeez, I bet god lets him live for a long time… if only to keep him out of heaven.
Yes Kat
Ireland will be reunited in our lifetime.
On second thoughts Tris , what about here as a base for arlene , ruthie and mungo.
Gruinard Island looks peaceful enough today but in 1942 it was a different story. The small island sits quietly in Gruinard Bay halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool without causing much of a fuss, but when top MoD boffins from the Porton Down military research laboratory in Wiltshire wanted a quiet spot to test their new weapons it suddenly became hot property.
As the Second World War escalated, there was a worry that the Germans would attack Britain with germ warfare. Gruinard Island was deemed far enough away from anywhere important to be used as a testing ground for the anthrax bacterium. It is fatal in 95% of cases when ingested – not something to be messed with. So this innocent piece of land became Scotland’s top secret ‘Anthrax Island’.
As part of the experiment, 60 sheep were penned up and exposed to anthrax-infected bombs. Within three days they were dropping like flies and the scientists had the proof they needed. The plan was for anthrax to play a part in Operation Vegetarian – a deadly programme designed to cause maximum damage. Linseed cakes contaminated with anthrax would be air dropped over Germany. The cattle would ingest the spores and contaminate the meat supply, killing swathes of German citizens in the process.
All before the Russians let loose with nerve agents.
See the unionists , not my job gov, failed to look after the animals in the Salisbury incident.
I knew about Gruinard, in fact I remember seeing warning signs on the shores opposite back in the day. Can’t have been too long ago when it was finally cleaned up.
So if the tests were positive why wasn’t the project carried out against the enemy? After all at the height of WWII the gloves were very definitely off. We probably wouldn’t have Brexit if we’d exterminated the Germans back then, after all it would literally have been a taste of their own medicine?
I seem to remember that Ewen Bain (creator of Angus Og) went to Gruinard to collect rocks which he decorated in a Scottish fashion to sell to English tourists. I can’t find anything on the internet. Did I imagine this?
Can’t remember if angus Ogg sold off painted rocks.
What I do remember is that soil samples were posted to worthy recipients in the peace office, sorry Winston, War office, that resulted in earth being removed , dumped elsewhere and tons of chemical decontaminant sprayed.
A flock of sheep put on the island and left to see the results.
Think our german friends might just have been ahead of the game and would have done the same , end result, ground contaminated and useless for a few generations, not a successful outcome to a conventional war where you want the territory.
My thoughts are similar to making spirits, alcohol is the output of enzymes, eventually the enzymes die off due to level of contaminant in the wine.
I think the original strain was attenuated so that the contamination would have not have been permanent and capable of being diffused accidentally centuries later
Apparently, given good hospital treatment, it is only life threatening rather than terminal. Which is good news!
______________________________
I’d have thought a decent nerve agent would kill pretty quickly.
Unless the aim is to spread it.
We live in a very strange world where people are near dead on a park bench, where claims are made about the origin of the agent, where the effects of the agent are a lot weaker that you’d expect and no-one, just no-one has a scooby about what has occurred. Sadly, this includes the highest reaches of the UK government.
This, in my opinion, is a huge failure by of our democracy and is one of the many reasons I want to disassociate from the loony tunes that inhabit Westminster.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Do we still have any remote islands where we can exile the likes of her? I see Muckle Flugga is no longer inhabited … 😉
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What have seagulls ever done to you?
The Scotsman 5th July 2014:
“Several people on Twitter reported disruption in the city during the walk. One Glasgow resident tweeted: “Orange March is chaos around my flat. Walk home see 3 casualties, 2 arrests and a man punch a seagull.” “
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Honestly, I didn’t know that their hatred extended to seabirds. Still on a remote rock with luck they might get skuared 😉
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LOL.
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I hope the bloke who punched the seagull caught him on his beak. They are pretty sharp… and probably not awfully clean.
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Wouldn’t she and her crew of oddballs and misfits not be happier in Ascension or South Georgia? No permanent populations for them to try to make miserable.
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Ascension maybe… South Georgia has penguins… Out of the question, says Munguin!
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Absolutely not South Georgia, and not Ascension either! I mean, I wouldn’t like to be biffed on the beak by an orangeman – or even an orangeperson – either, so I don’t see why innocent, and probably atheistic, wildlife should be subjected to such gratuitous violence.
The area round the South Pole is pretty free of wildlife, but I would worry about them polluting a pristine environment. It’s a thorny question and a complex conundrum, really: where can you put a waste of space, and what can you do with it afterwards?
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I was going to suggest Pitcairn, but it’s been bedevilled by unwholesome goings-on in recent years.
On second thoughts, might be perfect for them given their history of Iris Robinson and the DUP MLA who was a freelance hymn singer with a penchant for bidy-building masseurs in hotel rooms.
Pitcairn should be paradise for them.
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If they got any winsome young lads there, old Iris will be right on it.
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One of these eternal questions, Ed.
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Sounds OK, although we’d probably be able to hear her voice from there.
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In lieu of a fog horm???
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🙂
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When we have a mass migration too Scotland from Ireland, as in the Famines, this time of Proddies, we will know the game is up for Westminster, as that will their last and legacy card.
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I don’t mind them coming here, but I don;t want Orange nutters.
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Indeed. We already have way more than enough of the home-grown variety.
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Whatever happens in Ireland as a result of Brexit,the DUP are going to be held responsible.
If,as seems likely,NI is allowed to remain an EU enclave,their hard line “anything but Irish” supporters will be very unhappy bunnies.
On the other hand,should a hard border return to divide the island,moderates will blame them for the economic and social chaos that will result.
Arlene and friends had better salt Westminstet’s bung away in some tax haven and prepare to jump ship come the day,England comes to mind.
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LOL… true. Like the rest of Brexit it’s heads heads you lose, tails … oops, you lose again.
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I hear Rockall is quite awful this time of year. That’ll suit Arlene
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Beat me to it jamescaine709.
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What’ll she get? Sweet Rockall …
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I’d have gone with Cascara, give the bats something to shit on.
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That would fit, they’re bat-shit crazy 🙂
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LOL Illy. How rude!
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James… do you not like seagulls or something?
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This “If Ireland reunifies I’ll leave” trope or schtick has its echo of course in “If Scotland becomes independent I’ll leave”, and the psychology is quite evidently the same. My point is that I simply do not understand it. It’s up there with other such bonkers assertions as “Scotland cannot become independent because then my children in England would become foreigners”.
Of the seven or eight countries I’ve lived in in my life I have always been my Scottish self and everyone else has been their Austrian or Spanish or Kenyan or French or American or Tanzanian selves, and it’s never bothered me a bit as I would never have expected them to be anything else, and my status then was much more foreign than any Scottish Unionist’s or Ulster “Loyalist”‘s would be in an independent Scotland or a united Ireland – Unionists and Loyalists would still be in the same place, in the same society, surrounded by the same people, and they would still have all their democratic and civil rights.
To put it another way, what is wrong with these people?
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That was one of Margaret Curran’s most dreadful statements.
Like you I’ve liven abroad and it never occurred to me that I would be a foreigner to my family or friends.
Or to them, I suspect.
In any case, why would it bloody matter. Does being a foreigner somehow make one less?
In most of the world I’m a foreigner and I can’t think of anywhere I’ve even felt “less”.
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eddjasfreeman,
I have always thought that the “If Scotland becomes independent I’ll leave” schtick was an empty threat. Where would they go? The rest of the world consists of foreigners. Kind of by definition.
The obvious point to make is that the world outside Scotland’s or even the UK’s borders is a fascinating place.
These foreigners have art and science, intelligent commentary on the issues of the day, solutions to some of our problems, I am in the Lesley Riddoch camp when it comes to that. I see London as a ‘black hole’ that drags us all into it’s orbit, and not in a good way.
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LOL… remember Her Royal Highness Duchess Moan of MayUnfair… She said she would leave if we became independent.
The only good thing about not winning our referendum was that she went anyway…
That was a close shave.
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Lady Moan of Mayfair Bingo, crypto-currency guru.
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That’s the duchess, bless her, no I believe resident somewhere between the Isle of Man and Monaco, so even London didn’t get her for long.
Bless.
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I see she’s wearing a crown… ambitious.
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She’s heard that no one wants Charlie and Mrs Parker Bowles and she practising…
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It seems to me that the relative silence on whether Brexit was stolen, as compared to the kick-back about the Trump win, suggests that our democracy has already been compromised. It is odd, is it not, that a referendum, which may have been manipulated is not the subject of furious debate.
Talk me down.
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A cannae, A wullnae an A’m no gonnae – talk you down, I mean.
The most significant difference between the stolen election / stolen referendum affairs in the US and the UK is, I believe, the role of the meeja. In the States, there is still some real, independent, investigative journalism going on, whereas in the UK, the messaging is under the control of the Establishment in the broadest sense. Given that the meeja is controlled, in the main, by a coterie of right-wing meeja barons who are unfriendly to Europe, a symbiotic / parasitic political class, and a Tory party that is explosively close to splitting on the Europe issue and is terrified of exposing the deep divisions within itself…
… and because you cannot talk about stolen elections and referendums in either the US or the UK without mentioning Russia, and mentioning Russia in such a context seems to bring an extraordinary number of people out in hives.
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No… no one is talking about that.
Look, there’s a squirrel with some of that lovely Novichok …
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Well Tris
You are such a great comfort to baroness moany that you could get the baroness to put arlene up at the mayfair appartment.
That would be your good deed for the century.
If you were in with lizzie the last maybe one of her rooms would be available.
O/T reports today that the royal wedding cake has been hit with the sugar tax, the cakes for the big wedding are to cost £FIFTY THOUSAND, 8 of them needed, as my buddy says, “Whats wrong with Creigs”
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Queen Michelle?
Someone told me you can get the same sort of cake in “Iceland” (the store, not the country) for £6 a shout!
Some weird flavour, I’m told… Lemongrass and cucumber or something… sheesh, posh people??????
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I expect they stick their pinkies oot as they shovel their cake into their cake-holes, whereas we plebs dinnae bother because we’re far too busy cramming it in before some other bugger can grab it … ah yes, of course, when I were a lad, we got a chocolate digestive between the four of us no more than once a month, and only if we were extremely well behaved, very lucky, and had passed no objectionable remarks about our elders and betters at any time within living memory…
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A whole digestive between you?
Jeez, but you were posh!
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Reunification is coming and Arlene knows it….one way ticket to the moon, by bones m comes to mind…though she’d get the hump at wee green aliens…
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EEEEEEK Greeeeeeen NOOOOOOOOOOOO
She’ll need to take orange paint with her… I’m sure Trumpy will have some.
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She wouldn’t mind them so much if they were orange aliens, probably. If they’re aliens, can they still be predestined to be Presbyterians? I Think We Should Be Told!
P.S. The meenister at the kirk I was obliged to attend in my prepubescent youth, kilt and camelhair coat, for reasons of maternal snobbery, was a cold fish, actually a rather nasty piece of work. Years later, when I was languishing in one of the local hospitals – I do a very impressive languish – he came to give me a pastoral visit. Apart from a brief greeting and the “How are you?”, to which I replied “Not too good right at the moment” – I had an impressive number of tubes sticking out of me, or into me depending on your point of view – his contribution was “Well, I expect you’ll feel better soon”. And that was it. He turned on his heel, and walked off without saying goodbye.
Later, a Catholic priest showed up – an eccentric old fellow, he had his biretta on squint, and his glasses weren’t exactly horizontal either – and said, by way of greeting, “Och, you don’t look very well at all! Are you alright?”, and we took the conversation from there. At one point, in a spirit of full disclosure, I said “I have to tell you, Father, I’m not one of yours”, in response to which he swivelled his eyes left, and swivelled them right, then leaned in close and said very quietly “Well, I won’t tell God if you don’t”, which had the desired effect of making me laugh, and God did I need it right then.
Alert readers may have noticed by now that I cannot thole sectarianism in general and Scottish and Nornirish orangery in particular, indeed anyone who insists on behaving as if religious wars were still the latest fashion in civil and geopolitical strife. Actually, I was never much at risk of going down with bigotry anyway, but that priest would have successfully immunized me against it even if I had been, I think.
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Your priest sounds like a pretty fun guy.
Some of them (particularly the fie and brimstone ones) are fearsome characters. You think… Jeez, I bet god lets him live for a long time… if only to keep him out of heaven.
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Yes Kat
Ireland will be reunited in our lifetime.
On second thoughts Tris , what about here as a base for arlene , ruthie and mungo.
Gruinard Island looks peaceful enough today but in 1942 it was a different story. The small island sits quietly in Gruinard Bay halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool without causing much of a fuss, but when top MoD boffins from the Porton Down military research laboratory in Wiltshire wanted a quiet spot to test their new weapons it suddenly became hot property.
As the Second World War escalated, there was a worry that the Germans would attack Britain with germ warfare. Gruinard Island was deemed far enough away from anywhere important to be used as a testing ground for the anthrax bacterium. It is fatal in 95% of cases when ingested – not something to be messed with. So this innocent piece of land became Scotland’s top secret ‘Anthrax Island’.
As part of the experiment, 60 sheep were penned up and exposed to anthrax-infected bombs. Within three days they were dropping like flies and the scientists had the proof they needed. The plan was for anthrax to play a part in Operation Vegetarian – a deadly programme designed to cause maximum damage. Linseed cakes contaminated with anthrax would be air dropped over Germany. The cattle would ingest the spores and contaminate the meat supply, killing swathes of German citizens in the process.
All before the Russians let loose with nerve agents.
See the unionists , not my job gov, failed to look after the animals in the Salisbury incident.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I knew about Gruinard, in fact I remember seeing warning signs on the shores opposite back in the day. Can’t have been too long ago when it was finally cleaned up.
So if the tests were positive why wasn’t the project carried out against the enemy? After all at the height of WWII the gloves were very definitely off. We probably wouldn’t have Brexit if we’d exterminated the Germans back then, after all it would literally have been a taste of their own medicine?
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I seem to remember that Ewen Bain (creator of Angus Og) went to Gruinard to collect rocks which he decorated in a Scottish fashion to sell to English tourists. I can’t find anything on the internet. Did I imagine this?
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Ouch…
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When was it cleared up. I doubt I’d like to go live there.
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Yeah, I heard about that.
They say all is fair in love and war, but that seemed not to be.
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Can’t remember if angus Ogg sold off painted rocks.
What I do remember is that soil samples were posted to worthy recipients in the peace office, sorry Winston, War office, that resulted in earth being removed , dumped elsewhere and tons of chemical decontaminant sprayed.
A flock of sheep put on the island and left to see the results.
Think our german friends might just have been ahead of the game and would have done the same , end result, ground contaminated and useless for a few generations, not a successful outcome to a conventional war where you want the territory.
My thoughts are similar to making spirits, alcohol is the output of enzymes, eventually the enzymes die off due to level of contaminant in the wine.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Anthrax has no shelf life.
I think the original strain was attenuated so that the contamination would have not have been permanent and capable of being diffused accidentally centuries later
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Ah… Does anyone know how long Novichock lasts?
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Apparently, given good hospital treatment, it is only life threatening rather than terminal. Which is good news!
______________________________
I’d have thought a decent nerve agent would kill pretty quickly.
Unless the aim is to spread it.
We live in a very strange world where people are near dead on a park bench, where claims are made about the origin of the agent, where the effects of the agent are a lot weaker that you’d expect and no-one, just no-one has a scooby about what has occurred. Sadly, this includes the highest reaches of the UK government.
This, in my opinion, is a huge failure by of our democracy and is one of the many reasons I want to disassociate from the loony tunes that inhabit Westminster.
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Is this the definition of ‘military grade’? It doesn’t actually kill you. just makes you a bit off colour?
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Put’s you right off lunch?
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If it’s past its sell-by date, it may just have gorn a bit orff.
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