WHY CAN WE NOT HAVE WHAT THEY HAVE?
Also it is worth remembering at this point that the Kingdom of Denmark consists of three nations.
There is the mainland of Denmark itself and the self governing islands of Faroes and Greenland.
Parliament in Tórshavn
When Denmark joined the EU, or EEC Common Market (at the same time as the UK and Ireland) The Faroes decided not to join.
Greenland, with less autonomy in these days than the Faroes, did join. However, as Greenland is geographically a part of North America rather than Europe and seemed to the Greenlanders that they GAVE more than they took, when they achieved Home Rule, they held a referendum and decided to leave the EU.
Parliament in Nuuk
Three very different parts of the same Kingdom, able to have very different relationships with the EU. No one could reasonably argue that Scotland and England were not very different. So why are the wills of the Faroese and Greenlanders more important to Denmark, than the will of the Scots to Britain?
Parliament in Copenhagen
Given that Mrs May droned on incessantly about the “will of the British people”, why was the “will of the Scottish people ignored”, when a manageable system which, I admit, would have had to be modified for the UK, was already available?
*******
In case you missed it, Munguin got some organic tomatoes today.
A slice of turnip and a tomato is on the menu for special guests to the Towers.
Further to Andi’s comment about orange, Munguin is doing his diplomatic best for Scotland.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Perhaps the only reason that NI has been left to trade freely with the EU is the Belfast Agreement.
The Tories know that any threat to that will mean no trade deal with the USA (their desired replacement for EU trade).
The “F### everyone” approach taken by Johnson and his unhinged Brexiteers in their pursuit of Freedom from EU rules was very much a threat to that agreement.
Teresa May was prepared to cut NI out of the UK state but she needed the DUP to support her government so had to back down.
Johnson with his subsequent 80 seat majority didn’t need to worry about the DUP but was hell bent on creating an image of GREAT Britain ruling the waves again and couldn’t countenance the break up of the UK state so was prepared to end the Belfast Agreement treaty and confront the EU.
Scotland,unfortunately,hasn’t got the benefit of the USA threatening England’s Tories which is why they are presently lauding the benefits of devolution in NI but doing the complete opposite in Scotland.
Beyond contempt.
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The way we are treated is beyond contempt, you’re right.
My loathing for what Britain stands for increases by the day.
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Scots MPs should be pointing out that this preferencial treatment of Northern Ireland is a breach of the 1707 Treaty of Union between Scotland and England and therefor gives us the right to declare it is finished.
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LOL Good point.
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Forget your turnips & tomatoes – it’s all about orange, plain and simple!
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Very good , Andi!
I’ve revised the post to cover that point.
🙂 🙂
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Scotland has oil, and gas, and land, and renewables, and water, lots of it. Scotland is England’s cash cow, it’s simple really. The English government has given up on NI. The English government has other fish to fry, tax haven, free ports, and, Charter cities are the real agenda. Selling off public services, councils, cities, buildings, housing etc, lock stock and barrel, going,going, gone!
In letting NI go, Sunak had no choice because, Biden would have sanctioned the Uk, and anyway, it’s a win win for the Tory Labour disaster capitalism agenda. When businesses start to exit ‘great Britain’, for the actual sunlit uplands of northern Ireland, there will be job losses in Scotland and of course, less revenue from business rates etc, so councils will have to make cuts to essential services. Tory/Labour coalition councils in Scotland are already wasting public money on things like the coronation while cutting funding to education etc.
Of course, Scotland is just twenty miles from NI. You can see NI from the west coast of Scotland on a clear day. So what might that proximity mean in terms of movement of goods, or in terms of trade? Will it benefit Scotland, or have a negative effect for Scotland somehow. I have no idea.
One thing though, to see Sunak jumping with joy as he announced how brilliant this ‘deal’ is for NI, was a massive F off to Scotland, and clears the way for the Tory/Labour power grab from Scotland, with the English imposed ‘internal market’ cr*p.
How support for independence is not at 80% is crazy, but the so called media controls the narrative as we know. Let’s hope the new SNP leader 😬 has a plan, a water tight clever plan because if not, Scotland is truly screwed.
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Well said.
Seems that it’s easy to make red and green channels in the Irish Sea but it’s not possible at Gretna or Carter Bar.
Last week we were exporting 5,000 MW an hour to englandland.
Around £2million an hour.
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I know that France has to supply them with electricity too… and I think Ireland does.
But they have to pay for that.
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Tris,
Norway
Belgium
France
Netherlands
All deliver electricity by DC cables, there are 2 cables to ireland, one to the North and one to the South.
Hunterston has 2 cables to Angelsey, 2,000 MW and the cross border overhead lines, East and West.
Last week we were exporting 6,000MW on all connectors, a greater total than all the other Nations combined.
For later, it seems Oakeshotts released the whatsapp messages on handcock, she’s been given the job of writing his book it seems.
Very clever is our matt, she’sthe bidie in of trice, ukip.
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Thanks, Dave.
Ah it was her, was it…
She’s a particularly disagreeable woman.
Embarrassing for most people, but Hancock has no shame and he’s no longer a Tory having been thrown out of the party , presumably for being even too loathsome for them….!!!!!!!!!!
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I really fear your last paragraph may be correct A.H. Apart from the Independence Referendum defeat, I don’t remember feeling so despondent about our chances. Really disappointed by Nicola’s resignation. Whoever succeeds her, must not row back on our determination to achieve our goal, but so far I haven’t seen much that inspires me. Hopefully that will change once the hustings begin, and the candidates will enlighten us how they intend to take us to Independence.
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I agree, Alex.
Not over the moon about any of them.
Kate Forbes seems like she’s the sharpest.
But I’m underwhelmed.
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I was looking for a positive advocate for Scotland in Europe. They’ve all failed that test.
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I don’t think the EEA is the answer.
Most of the costs with few of the financial benefits relating to grants, across a range of areas. Obviously, the fabulous benefit of
single market membership would be a boost.
But the EEA members and Switzerland are all rich. They don’t need farming grants, construction grants or levelling up funds. Their governments can provide them.
The EEA rejected Mrs May’s suggestion that the UK might join as a way of staying in the single market.
Although, to be fair that could have been to do with the relative size of the small EEA countries and the UK… or it could have been to do with the fact that they suspected that the Uk would want everything done its way, because, y’know, they once ruled the world and they punch above their weight.
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I can imagine UK creating something over time that is a reasaonable approximation of a 3rd pillar for membership of EU internal market. I just don’t see it joining EFTA/EEA.
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9 years of promises and mandates should inspire you
Onwards and upwards
🐼🐼🏴🏴
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Yeah, it should, but mandates don’t seem to make that much difference to Brits. Unless they are Tory mandates.
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I don’t see that is any of the new leadership possibles, to be honest, Hetty.
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Well said ArtyHetty…..re your comment on “How support for independence is not at 80% is crazy”…..the ‘secret’ poll on support for the Union ,which was done by Michael Gove, has STILL not been released….Tommy Shepherd challenged this and the UK Govt went to court to stop it being released……THAT in itself paints a very clear picture that does not look good for the Union (INO)…..
David Lidington also did a ‘secret’ poll when in May’s Govt that was not released which Tommy Shepherd also challenged….why not released ?….well once again obvs because the data must show that perhaps tis not as neck and neck between NO and YES to Indy as they would have us all believe….
Both polls used PUBLIC money…indeed Gove’s poll was said to be money that was allocated for Covid…….
PUBLIC money but the PUBLIC not to be told of polls findings…how very Tory of them both.
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Good points there, NMRN.
There’s only one reason for hiding the results of polling. That is that they show something the government doesn’t want you to know.
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The obvious plan is that Westminster has broken terms of the Treaty of Union (not for the first time) so Scotland can state it is null and void.
See how they like that!
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Didn’t that happen already when Thatcher tried out her poll tax on Scotland first?
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Can you provide any details about how the Treaties of Union have been breached?
Contemporary treaties between sovereign states are breached all the time but they are not declared null and void as a consequence. What happens is a process of arbitration with a typical consequence being financial reparations geared at compensating for commerical loss . A good example is Canada, which frequently found that its environmental laws were in conflict with the NAFTA treaty. There was never any question that NAFTA would be declared null and void as a result of an investor-state dispute.
The Treaties of Union cannot be voided now because all of its obligations were discharged 300 years ago. What we have now is a single political entity that upholds the Acts of Union. It can only be “voided” by the political entity that upholds it. That would be a political choice, not a legal one.
If you believe that UK gov has breached a key part of the UK’s constitution I would suggest a crowdfunder to litigate the grievance. The problem is that the solution will either be a change to UK law expressly allowing the anomaly or UK gov rethinking how they implement contemporary policy. Which one they choose is again a political choice, not a legal one. I can guarantee that this litigation will not lead to independence. I very much doubt it would even lead to court because you’d need to demonstrate legal standing as well as the breach. These are high barriers.
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Thanks for the reminder re the situation regarding Denmark and associated places. Alongside the proposal for the North of Ireland, these indicate that pragmatic, and principled solutions can be found. But, of course, despite the unionists dismissing Scottish aspirations for independence as indicative of our arrogant ‘exceptionalism’, they consider us to be ‘exceptional’ in that things that are in practice elsewhere cannot apply in Scotland.
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It was amazing that they managed to find solutions for the North of Ireland and for Gibraltar, but were unable to even consider the near two thirds vote against what was apparently “the will of the British people ”
And the speed with which they dismissed the Scottish government’s proposals meant that if they even read them, they didn’t take any time to study them.
We were treated with contempt. It’s not surprising then, that that is what many of us feel for the current arrangements.
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But Starmer is going to ‘make Brexit work’, so that is why we are ‘better together’.
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Oh. Is THAT why we are better together?
Because looking across Europe and all the comments from friends/Munguinites who live there, I was definitely beginning to wonder.
Trust a junior aristocrat, a knight of the realm, to come up with the answer. We should have known they would.
That’s the British way.
Know your place.
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And tug your forelock and mutter, “Thank ‘ee kind sir, Sir.”
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Working for Munguin, you get used to doing that!
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The problem isn’t just the UK’s lack of interest in pursuing anything special for Scotland. The problem is that the EU are not interested in pursuing it, either. It might be a different story if UK was in the EU and Scotland wished to leave but that is not the case.
Gibraltar and NI both benefit from having a land border with an EU member state because it means that EU member states have a vested interest in finding solutions to their advantage. There’s been some relaxation of Schengen rules at the Spain/Gibraltar border but it’s still the case that the EU customs union border is upheld there. It’s possible for individuals to cross into Spain but once done the only valid crossing point back out of Schengen for non-EU is at the Spain/Gibraltar border. Outsourcing the EU’s external CU border to a third party is something unique for the NI/RoI border. They’re not going to do this anywhere else.
Given that the EU Commission has now placed internal limits on the time it devotes to the UK there’s not much chance of any change happening at all until the 2024 meeting scheduled by the TCA.
Without an EU land border and without any EU member state ready to burn their political capital for Scotland, the only option that remains is independence.
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Thanks for that, Terry.
I’d little idea about how the Gibraltar situation worked, although clearly, as people had to cross the border to go to work, I reckoned they had made some adjustments.
I guess we are stuck with the situation, as both the possible prime ministers, now and in the foreseeable future, have said emphatically that they will not, regardless of how we vote, allow us to have a referendum.
Our hopes must be that this was both Sunak and Sir Keir lying for the sake of trying to win votes from unionists in Scotland and possibly in England/Wales. Both of them are known for this kind of thing.
I’ve read that the EU would be keen to have Scotland as a member, but we know it doesn’t get involved in internal matters, even within its members. And this is a UK internal matter.
I can’t see that changing.
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I have suggested a solution earlier. One they cannot treat with insults.
We just need a party or an MP to point it out!
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And I have answered your suggestion above.
TLDR: this will not work and there are compelling reasons why it has never been tried or mentioned by any MP or MSP.
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Anything that prevents things like family visits really needs a solution because it hurts both sides.
There is nothing stopping Scotland joining the EU as an independent country. The biggest barrier to this outcome after independence are the indy politicians right now who wish to treat EFTA as a holding pen for EU membership, promote the idea that joining the EU is a binary event, and believe that EEA accession will be faster than EU accession.
I’m afraid the current situation is at least medium-term.
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Downing Street frantically trying to back pedal on Sunak’s wee speech in NI……as in …what we ALL saw with our own eyes and heard with our OWN ears is to be interpreted as NOT what he, Sunak, said or meant…..
Imagine those actually THERE at that business in NI listening to Sunak and what he said and not thinking to themselves….Did we no have that BEFORE Brexit ?….Brexit that YOUR party are to BLAME for……I mean if YOU were there YOU would surely be thinking that listening to Sunak !
Sunak so desperate to convince those in NI to embrace his ‘deal’ that he forget it was being televised and viewers in the rest of the UK would be watching and listening to his wee speech………what a F***Y (rhymes with Canny…but he is clearly not) LOL
Rhetorical Q….Is there NOTHING the Tories can get right via all that they say and do ?
Meanwhile on SKY News regular BBC QT guest Richard Walker, Executive Chairman at Iceland Foods, stated vegetable shortage was due to “climate change” and “adverse weather in Morocco” (not Brexit obvs)….the fact that Richard is going to stand at the next GE as a TORY has NOTHING to do with him helping the TORIES to cover up another BREXIT consequence (one of MANY)……..
Now we have MORE scandal with Matt Hancock during Covid on Care homes where he did not take advice of Chris Whitty on testing….and Whatsapp message from Hancock sent to Former Tory Chancellor George Osbourne ,who is now an editor of a newspaper, where Matt asks him to put favourable front page during Covid in his newspaper and Osbourne said he would do…..” I’ll tell the team to splash it”……
Is there ever going to be an end to all of the scandals and incompetence linked to Tories (another Rhetorical Q)…and how many investigations are still ongoing that are linked to Tories and when the HELL with they be concluded and more importantly will the complaints be upheld and appropriate punishment administered …..and has Michelle Mone , Lady INO, vanished from the face of the Earth……when will the investigation on her be completed and if (big IF) found to be guilty what will HER punishment be….a slap on the wrist and STILL able to keep her title……I have a title for her but cannot repeat it on her …save to say it is what you would call a female dog….I rest my case M’laud.
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It is incredible, but it’s not the First time a Tory has sold the single market as a plus. Gove did it too. And he was ridiculed for it.
They really need to keep up.
Matt Hancock’s yet again in an embarrassing situation.
WhatsApp messages are supposed to be confidential, so someone must have leaked that. Disgruntled Civil Servant?
So they admitted that the tabloids are just tools of the Tory government. Well that’s a surprise.
“I say, could you tell the Jocks that they will lose 250,000 jobs if the stop being part of England”
“Yes, of course, Rishi. You won’t forget me in your honours list, will you?”
There is a great long list of things that happened and appear to have been swept under the rug. Two or three involve sex scandals;
Then there are drugs all over Westminster that SIR Hoyle was going to have the police look at.
Moan and the other profiteers, including Gove and Hancock who seem to have been complicit.
And what about wee François?
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Indeed Tris…and there is still the Tory (Brexiteer) who was arrested at the HOC last year for suspicion of indecent assault, sexual assault, r*pe(a), abuse of position of trust and misconduct and also a string of other sexual offences spanning seven years…his name has been noted on Twitter…..will not say it on here…but he has been missing from HOC since last year (Tories asked him to stay away from the parliamentary estate) and from TV channels too obvs as before he was never off TV channels NOW he has disappeared from them….he is allegedly THE one who made a big Hoo Haa about how everyone should be Proud to be British and he wanted every child to learn Britain’s national anthem with the aim of fostering a sense of patriotism….also called for it to be mandatory to fly Union flags at all UK schools…….but apparently those who refer to themselves as Unionists do not regard him as a (British) NATIONALIST……FANATIC…..or indeed what he really is soon to be known as…..IF found guilty….a PREDATOR of WOMEN aka RAP*ST ( like Charlie Elphicke the Tory MP who when found GUILTY served time in prison for same crimes AGAINST women)…….aye but Tories CARE about women’s rights so they do …so they do….NOT.
It was noted that this Tory MP was released on bail last year until this year…..case MUST be coming up this year surely…..then we will know his name…..perhaps send him a flag to drape himself in during his trial…..IF there is a trial that is….he is after all…a TORY !
The TORY MP in question has not voted in HOC since April 2022…..(you can check his voting record online IF you have guessed his name)…he was arrested in MAY 2022….coincidence I think NOT….yet another ‘I rest my case M’laud’ moment in ze bag…..I can then MOVE ON to some other scandal(s) linked to TORIES….NOW IS THE TIME (always) to highlight their many many many flaws and their many many many misdemeanours surely……the party that just keeps GIVING….us scandals and corruption……aka bad governance.
Have a lovely day Tris ( and everyone else on here too)
🙂
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Oh… I wonder who that is.
(I honestly don’t know, but I googled the GSTQ and union jack thing and came up with two names. One was Winston Churchill’s grandson… so I’m assuming it was the other one. He sounds a bit of an ARse.
I look forward to the police doing something about him… although with the Met, that’s unlikely.
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The handcock gave the messages to oakeshott to help write his book.
The brain of britain might as well have given them to the news of the world or the SUN/Star.
He was deemed suitable by the flounder to be in charge of Health, well the destruction of same.
The oakeshott is the friend of trice, ukip? or whatever they call themselves.
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Why on earth would he have trusted her with such a potentially explosive piece of information, especially give her relationship with Tice.
Is he stupid?
Did he not ensure that she signed some sort of confidentiality clause? Maybe he did and she broke it.
Tice is leader of Reform UK, which is a sort of cross between UKIP and BNP as far as I can see.
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was briefly a significant political force in 2019. After Brexit, it was renamed to Reform UK in January 2021, and became primarily an anti-lockdown party during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6] Subsequently, in December 2022, it began campaigning on broader right-wing populist themes during the British cost-of-living crisis.[7][8] Its greatest electoral success was as the Brexit Party, which won 29 seats and the largest share of the national vote in the 2019 European Parliament election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK
Oakeshott is Tice’s bidie in. (Imagine the warm glow of humanity in that household…. EEEEEK)
I wonder what she’s getting out of spilling the beans…
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Is he stupid?
Do I need to answer that?
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I think we all know the answer to that.
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https://t.co/xewiLorz36
So don’t invest in Scotland, Wales or England?
Nice one Andrea, you foxhunting dipstick.
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Politics Polls
@PoliticsPollss
Rishi Sunak has rejected calls from the SNP to give Scotland the same “special status” he is proposing for Northern Ireland over post-Brexit trade. Should Scotland get special Brexit status?
Yes 72.4%
No 25.8%
Don’t know 1.8%
Totally random twitter poll.
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