Under what circumstances, if at all, would the SNP government move to open defiance of Westminster?

Question 4: Under what circumstances, if at all, would the SNP government move to open defiance of Westminster?

On Twitter you meet all sorts: English nationalists fixated on Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Scottish nationalists dreaming of the proclamation of the Provision Government in 1916 or the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet declaring in 1990 that Lithuania was again sovereign

The muscular unionists of Twitter also brindle at talk of constitutional continuity between the old Empire, the Commonwealth and the current UK.

Northern Ireland left the UK for an Irish Dominion in 1922, returning a heartbeat later to the UK.

The (Conservative and) Unionist Party ruled NI for 60 years until the collapse – 3 of their 6 PMs were Etonians of whom NI has not since had a sniff.

The first Direct Rule bill was drafted in February 1969 when Francis McCluskey, the first victim of the modern troubles, had 5 months yet to live.

The plan was to use the powers under the old constitution to run the North as a Crown Colony with the Governor, a New Zealander appointing an unelected government. He was told he could do what he needed, and an Indemnity Bill, a get-out-of-jail-free card, could come after if need be.

NI’s place in the Union had been protected in law – it required the consent of Stormont.

Written down these proposals just looked mad. In the debates within Westminster the sovereignty of the people of Northern Ireland was accepted. No change in the status of NI without the consent of the people of NI runs like a golden thread through the constitutional proposals of the early and late 70s and early and late 80s and early and late 90s.

This story has played out again and again.

Residual British sovereignty in Ireland caused the civil war of 1922 and was chipped away with the Abdication Crisis, the declaration of a Republic. Two military plans to take back the treaty ports were considered and dismissed during the Second War. Finally in 1948, the year the Empire died, the last trace was thrown over.

The same tune played across the Empire. The Dominions, the white Empire, got a soft-Sewel at the Empire Conference of 1931 – no Westminster legislation without consent. The King-Emperor and his Privy Council had declared war on Germany in 1914 for them all, but in 1939 their elected governments did it.

The final burials came very late with the Canadian Constitution Act of 1982 and the Australia Act of 1986.

Three times Scotland, and Wales, have voted as a sovereign peoples. The UK is in reality a voluntary union, but not yet an agreed voluntary union.

What 1215, and 1688 and 1916 and 1948 and 1990 all have in common is that sovereignty, of the Barons, of the Westminster parliament, of Ireland, of the reborn Lithuanian republic of 1940, was declared, asserted and accepted outside the law. Not guns and cattle rustling outside the law: but as an axiom of politics. Our challenge is to find a way to make the declaration and assertion stick.

The Scottish Tories and the Scottish Labour Party contain our fellow citizens of Scotland, good patriots them all, however much they disagree with us – our opponents are not our enemies. It is easy to say that the sovereignty of the people of Scotland must be declared, asserted and accepted but harder to say: and of these three, accepted is the greatest.

The people of Scotland will become sovereign, only incidentally in defiance of Westminster, when it, and its practical consequences, are accepted amongst our opponents too.

Scotland, will not, cannot and should not become independent without the support of a huge chunk of them as voted No in 2014. I have said to canvassers in Edinburgh before: if you come across bold Alex Massie on Leith Walk your chat is not expected to win him over, but it should at least wet his boots.

It behooves us all to measure ourselves on that standard.

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  1. Peter Breingan says:

    In my opinion an excellent piece.
    Now is the time to start the Indy campaign seriously – be prepared to delay a vote until there is a substantial majority in favour (70%???)

    1. JP58 says:

      This would be many peoples ideal scenario and demographics indicate we may get there someday. It would ensure vast majority of public would fully support an independent country which would be invaluable in early years which will almost inevitably be bumpy.
      Two questions though:
      What happens in meantime when independence parties clearly win more than 50% of vote in Holyrood & Westminster elections but not in 70% ballpark. This could lead to potential civil unrest and violence which most of us would wish to avoid.
      If Supreme Court judgement goes against Scottish Government how do we actually get a referendum because I have no doubt that the greater the chance of a Yes vote the greater will be Westminster opposition to a vote taking place. They have too much to lose if Scotland goes independent- IMHO they only agreed to a vote in 2014 because they were certain No would win and this would weaken SNP and case for independence. Westminster got an almighty fright and will try everything to avoid a future referendum as they now know they could well lose and more importantly lose all the resources that Scotland has.

      1. BSA says:

        So you agree that we are prisoners but you oppose any kind of decisive action to move things, preferring instead some very vague dream of 70 % support, presumably from the polls.

        1. JP58 says:

          BSA – I was only setting out the situation as I see it.
          I very much believe that elected MSPs at Holyrood areonly democratic way to assess whether the Scottish electorate want an independence referendum and the referendum is only democratic way to asses whether Scottish electorate want independence.
          I was trying to show the potential problems with the posters rather apple pie view on achieving independence.
          When it is obvious that support for independence is substantially above 50% as witnessed through elections there may be a case for targeted civil unrest and SNP disrupting Westminster parliament if a referendum is obstructed by Westminster. This point may not be far off.
          There is and will be no case for violence as it is morally wrong unless physically attacked and would quickly lose support for independence.
          As regards what actions should be taken- I have no clear answer and I am not an elected politician .

          1. 221007 says:

            No, a colony has since Roman times been a group of people who leave one country to form a settlement somewhere else but who remain subject to the government of the country they left.

            The idea that Scotland is a ‘colony’ of England is a relic of the old, now rather unattractive anglophobic ‘Faragist’ myth that Scotland has been ‘settled’ by immigrants who have since stolen resources that rightly belong to we ‘natives’, immigrants whom we natives should ‘rise’ against and ‘send homeward’/repatriate.

            It’s a nasty and latently fascistic idea.

          2. Niemand says:

            You are correct 221007 of course. The problem is the definition of colony has been changed to suit whatever agenda people have but still with trying to retain the highly charged negativity of the word that comes from its original meaning.

            To his credit, Alf Baird who got all this rolling in recent times, did at least look at the official criteria of ‘colony’ in order to justify his rhetoric. The most unpleasant bit was indeed that about the need for ‘colonial occupation’ to justify the tag, in which he simply said English ‘settlers’ were just that – indulging in an occupation, like some kind of army, you know people who just moved from England to Scotland. Those here who bang on about Scotland as colony quietly forget this bit because it is horrible, obviously.

            Scotland is not colony in any meaningful sense of the word. But the cat’s out of the bag now. Trouble is, such rhetoric will not help the cause of independence at all.

          3. SleepingDog says:

            @Niemand, and it is often difficult to categorise people as Scottish or English, and moreso families. I tried to find information on just on one metric, residency on marriage in Scotland. I was a little surprised to find a clear downward trend in marriages between one resident-Scot and one resident-elsewhere-in-UK, from 4.6% in 1974, to 1.0% in 2021, although I suspect that the trend may have been influenced by couples increasingly living together before marriage.
            https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/marriages-and-civil-partnerships/marriages-and-civil-partnership-time-series-data
            After all, selection for national teams in the UK and Ireland are famously open to personal choice based on mixed affiliations.

          4. 221011 says:

            ‘…it is often difficult to categorise people as Scottish or English…’

            It’s not really. All you need is some defined criteria on the basis of which individuals are assigned to one category of the other.

            Some people use bloodlines to assign nationality; others use behavioural habits (customs and traditions) as the basis for their differentiations. I prefer to use citizenship in my categorisation of folk: a body is ‘Scottish’ only insofar as s/he participates in the civic life of the imagined community that falls under the jurisdiction of that community’s political institutions; bloodline and/or cultural heritage has, to my mind, nothing to do with a body’s ‘Scottishness’ or ‘Englishness’ or ‘Britishness’ or whatever.

          5. Niemand says:

            This makes sense, in theory, but when you come up against the hard cases it starts to unravel as you have the idea of identity and identification trumping citizenship.

            For example, would / can an English person, recently moved to Scotland be called Scottish and would they see themselves as a Scot? I think not. Same for a Scottish person recently moved to England. And this can’t be dismissed since if a community is ‘imagined’ then what one identifies with is just as valid as an imagined community simply defined by a physical municipal border.

            That is why SD’s comment is valid – it isn’t always that simple. After a while that English person may feel more like a Scot and may be more accepted as such and their children more so. Or they may not because they choose not to or are refused such status by the community.

            Even civic nationalism uses the phrase ‘people of Scotland’, not Scots.

          6. 221013 says:

            There are no ‘hard cases’: citizenship defines nationality ‘objectively’, regardless of how people self-identify on the basis of things like bloodline, cultural heritage, or whatever. That’s precisely what makes civic nationalism inclusive; it doesn’t privilege any identity over any other in the res publica.

            The real problem is ethnic nationalism, a behavioural predisposition to privilege one’s own particular ‘tribe’ in the conduct of our public affairs, which confuses self-identity (what one ‘feels’ oneself to be) with national identity (a purely legal status).

          7. SleepingDog says:

            @Lord Parakeet the Cacophonist, citizenship is not, as in your delirium you say, an objective measure, not least because citizenship is often elective, and sometime guarded by subjective gatekeeper tests. There was a binational crisis devoted to this problem recently:
            “The situation arose from section 44(i) of the Australian Constitution, which prohibits parliamentarians from having allegiance to a foreign power, especially citizenship.”
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017–18_Australian_parliamentary_eligibility_crisis
            In the UK/British Empire/theocracy we are subjects rather than citizens anyway, no matter what term our passports use. Multiple associations/affiliations/eligibility criteria, international rules against statelessness, the invented and often-changing/contended jurisdictions that are deployed to claim or reject citizens, the sometimes elective nature and life-journey changes, combine to create insuperable problems for definitive and exclusive categorisation of citizenship, which in some cases can be gained (or lost) in stages (probationary perhaps).

            Given a successful Scottish Independence process, the citizenship of people currently residing within the demarcated (even if generally undisputed) boundaries of Scotland will not be a settled condition, and almost certainly there will be further elective and arbitrary processes.

            There is no one model for this. Look abroad for ongoing differences and disputes.

          8. 221013 says:

            You’re right: ‘…citizenship is not… an objective measure…’. There are no objective measures; all measures are conventional. But it does ‘define nationality ‘objectively’, regardless of how people self-identify on the basis of things like bloodline, cultural heritage, or whatever’.

            And, yes, citizenship is ascribed conditionally, according to whether or not candidates pass various tests, in most jurisdictions. My preference is for the minimal eligibility test of whether or not any given candidate participates in the civic life of the community of which s/he’s claiming citizenship. That’s the only test for citizenship (and, therefore, nationality) I’d like to see in Scotland.

            Binationality isn’t a problem for me. I can quite comfortably be a citizen of Scotland (‘Scottish’) inasmuch as I participate in the civic life of the imagined community of ‘Scotland’ and, at the same time, a citizen of Britain (‘British’) inasmuch as I participate in the civic life the the imagined community of ‘the UK’. Likewise, I used to be a trinational inasmuch as I was simultaneously a citizen of Europe until my participation in the civic life of the imagined community of the EU ceased.

            And, yes, as a citizen, I’m subject to the authority and protection of constitution or law of the res publica or public affairs of all of the various imagined communities in the civic life of which I participate. This is true regardless of what the nature of that constitution.

            And, of course, one of the things that are missing from the Scottish government’s prospectus for independence is a clear commitment on how (and by whom) our eligibility to be citizens, will be decided. Like I say, my preference would be for the minimal eligibility test of whether or not a body participates in the civic life of the imagined community of ‘Scotland’, regardless of his/her origins, ancestry, or heritage. But, you’re right, there are other models of citizenship and nationality. Which do you prefer?

          9. SleepingDog says:

            @Lord Parakeet the Cacophonist, I would prefer a form of citizenship that was less anthropocentric, was more realistically based on variable contributions (from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs), and that would evolve over time. I feel there should be democratic discussion about how far mandatory civic participation (for the able) should go; currently this relates to occasional requirements like jury service, or being press-ganged into the Royal Navy. I would, for example, support the idea of a harvest conscription if the alternative was leaving food-crops to rot in fields while people were going hungry, and a voluntary call proved insufficient.

            I would certainly *not* like to see any kind of Scottish ‘right to return’, whether based on racial or religious or ableist or whatever grounds:
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_citizenship_law

            In my view, Will is commonly over-valued in political discussions compared to Health (social, ecological, environmental, individual). I would prefer developing a concept of citizenship that embrace health, at least as can be objectively measured through proxies; and by health I include sanity, and by sanity I include planetary-realistic ideologies. War, for example, should be regarded as a typical sign of ill-health (both cause and effect of ill). Our current notions of subjecthood in the UK are still bound to the medieval notion of military service to the hereditary (or at least current) ruler through royal prerogative, divinely granted, shaped by the later requirements for imperial conquest and colonisation. Citizenship should probably have a defensive and only defensive role, although this should be extended in a biocracy to defending the living planet. #biocracynow

            I would also expect Scottish citizenship to break with (or override) citizenship with any other nation or similar group demanding superior allegiance, although perhaps this would only be enforced if an individual was seeking office or taking on national security roles (although I would expect to see the kinds of activities designated for national security extended to nationalised industries and life-supporting roles). In this respect, all Scottish citizens should be automatically released from any oath to a foreign power, including the UK Official Secrets Act (which I believe could be a major reason for some Unionists opposing Scottish Independence).

            New Scottish treason legislation (I envisage the penalties will be usually deportation to country of allegiance rather than any more severe punishments for most infringements) should embody these concepts of citizenship too.

          10. Niemand says:

            ‘That’s precisely what makes civic nationalism inclusive; it doesn’t privilege any identity over any other in the res publica.’

            So why does the civic nationalism as espoused by the SNP use the phrase ‘people of Scotland’ rather than Scots? By your reckoning everyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot, is Scottish. We know why they use that phrase and it is because the ‘imagined community’ does not and would not recognise everyone who lives in Scotland as Scottish not matter what idealistic notion you might have. It is not even about privileging anyone necessarily but about the complex relationship between nationality and ethnicity which is fluid not fixed.

          11. Niemand says:

            And by the way are we not still citizens of Europe regardless of whether we are in the EU or not? Are Norwegians or the Swiss not European?

          12. 221013 says:

            Yep, SD; we certainly should be having a national conversation to determine our eligibility for citizenship, a conversation from which no one should be ‘a priori’ excluded. If such a conversation were ever to be had, I’d be advocating that participation a shared civic life is all that should be required.

            I’ve no idea why the SNP talk of ‘the people of Scotland’ rather than ‘Scots’, Niemand. Perhaps it is a sop to those of its supporters who would still define our nationality exclusively, in terms of some genetic and/or cultural inheritance, rather than inclusively in terms of citizenship (i.e. a shared participation in the civic life of the imagined community). Or maybe it’s rather to distance itself from the residual ethnic connotations that still pollute ‘Scot’ and ‘Scottish’ as political designations.

            And I agree that many in the imagined community of ‘Scotland’ don’t and wouldn’t own everyone who participates in the civic life of that community as ‘Scottish’. But who people own and don’t own as our kin doesn’t matter here. All that matters is that everyone who participates in the civic life of our imagined community enjoys equal citizenship status, rights, and obligations. Whatever the ethnicity involved, anyone who moves to Scotland and makes their home here is politically no less ‘Scottish’ than I am.

          13. Niemand says:

            I very much agree with your last paragraph except the final bit is peculiarly narrow: ‘Whatever the ethnicity involved, anyone who moves to Scotland and makes their home here is politically no less ‘Scottish’ than I am.’ Politically? Well yes simply by definition of a political / jurisdictional border. But that could be said of almost any border from a country to a ward. It is stating the obvious. The much less obvious and complex thing is how do we negotiate the non-political state of being a Scot, Scottish? If the concern is about ‘equal citizenship status, rights, and obligations’ then that is intrinsically linked to that question since no matter the political status which is one that happens by default, it will still be a major factor in how people are treated.

          14. 221014 says:

            It’s not at all obvious to ethnic nationalists, who not only insist that states and nations should coincide, but also insist that nations should coincide with ‘bloodlines’ and/or nativity. The civic alternative needs to be constantly asserted against such fascistic atavism in the ongoing process of our nation-building.

            And I think civic nationalism IS how we best negotiate politically the growing plurality of ‘Scottishness’ as a cultural phenomenon. It at least aims at equal inclusion in our public decision-making irrespective of the ancestry and/or heritage of the members of that public; although our national institutions will a great deal of decolonising work before they can achieve this aim. These institutions are still far too atavistic in their ‘Scottishness’ to allow equal inclusion to new Scots.

          15. 221014 says:

            And Norwegians, Swiss, et al are ‘European’ only in the geographical sense, not in the political sense; in the same kind of sense as the sense in which we’ll remain ‘British’ even after we’ve left the UK and in which Argentinians, Belizeans, and Canadians are all ‘Americans’.

          16. Niemand says:

            Europe is a cultural entity not just a geographic one. The EU has not been around very long compared to the idea of Europe so I don’t see how not being in the EU makes you any less European culturally and in terms of identity. All it means is you are not a citizen of the EU, even if there is such a thing.

          17. 221014 says:

            Indeed, Europe is a cultural as well as a geographical entity. But ‘citizenship’ is neither a cultural nor a geographical condition, but a political one (‘the condition of being a legally recognised subject of a state or commonwealth’, as one definition goes). The only political entity in relation to which I could be a ‘European citizen’ is the EU.

          18. Niemand says:

            Hm you are playing with words. We are European and live in Europe and do in fact come under the jurisdiction of some European bodies like the European court which are not EU ones.

            But as you know citizen has more than one meaning and one is simply: ‘an inhabitant of a particular town or city’. We are inhabitants of Europe.

          19. 221016 says:

            Yep, it’s one of those words that, as Hegel said, ‘flit like bats in the twilight’, the true or absolute meaning of which is ultimately undecidable.

            But, in the context of the discourse of civic nationalism, we are European citizens to the extent that we’re subject to the jurisdiction of civic institutions like the European Court in exactly the same way that we’re Scottish citizens insofar as we’re subject to the jurisdiction of the civic institutions that define the imagined community of ‘Scotland’ and British citizens insofar as we’re subject to the jurisdiction of the civic institutions that define the imagined community of the UK.

          20. 221016 says:

            ‘…the imagined community of “the UK”‘, even.

  2. Gavinochiltree says:

    A colony is when one country is politically controlled by another country, which also exploits that countries resources for its own profit.
    That describes Scotland.
    First oil and gas, now renewables.
    How to decolonise Scotland without recourse to violence, when the democratic route is denied by the Tory and Labour parties?
    We have seen how guns and bombs (and the United States of America) have forced the UK to grant the international right of self-determination to Ireland.
    I detest the thought of political violence being used for Scottish independence.
    The only positive in that narrative is that “energy” is a soft target that eliminates human targets.
    I would hope Labour would come to its senses and give Scotland the same consideration as Ireland—Labour has stated it would remain neutral in any reunification referendum.

    1. Alan C says:

      You said it better than I would have, thanks.

    2. Laurie says:

      I don’t think Labour had any such position-it supports the union of 4 nations of including part of Ireland. Your contribution is typical of an outdated emotional nationalistic rant that I is not supported by a great many supporters of independence which recognises the historic ties with the rest of the UK and beloved on a social union between them this kind of anti-English tirade would lose a lot of votes in a referendum.

  3. Meg Macleod says:

    The final straws have been added to the camels back.westminsters arrogance.ignorance.and disregard of human rights…..what more does a country need to declare itself separate from these unacceptable ‘qualities’ of a government supposed to stand for freedom and respect

  4. Edward Cairney says:

    I think we are concentrating too much on “Independence” like it’s a goal or a final destination. It’s not, the whole independence thing will be a journey which may last a lifetime and beyond.
    Independence is something you feel and I don’t think the majority of Scots have ever felt “not independent”, the real task will be “reinvention” and that will take a while but we will be on the road to reinvention with no going back.
    The question posed by the article is under what circumstances will we defy our masters and that’s just about the size of it, isn’t a partnership, never was and never will be. Even in the world of all things equal and it’s not, someone has to make the first move. It’s like when four cars arrive at a roundabout simultaneously, everyone has the right of way and everyone doesn’t have the right of way. Someone has to make the first move and that someone will have to be us, defiance or no defiance.

    1. 221008 says:

      Spot on, Edward. That’s both the strength and weakness of the independence movement.

      Making Scottish government independent of the UK can be presented as a necessary step towards something else (controlling our own borders, a more just society, national rebirth, etc., etc.), offering as possibilities all things to all men, and thereby having a broad appeal that transcends the traditional dichotomy of ‘left’ and ‘right’, ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’.

      However, this strength also empties it of any real or substantive content, offering only the spoils to the victor in a post-independence struggle among competing communities of interest or ‘parties’ for control of that independent government, which is no different from what we have at present within our existing constitution. Independence only promises a smaller pond in which the various minnows can vie for dominance.

      What this particular minnow would like to see is a reconstitution of the state whereby none of the competing communities of interest in our society can win control of the levers of power and/or use those levers of power to impose its will on that society generally as a political project. I remain to be convinced that mere ‘independence’ as such will bring about such a reconstitution without a concomitant commitment to ‘independence’ as a process of radical democratic reform that limits the power of parties within government,

      As I keep saying, having our own wee Westminster in Edinburgh just doesn’t cut it.

    2. JP58 says:

      Edward – ‘I don’t think the majority of Scots have never felt not independent’ – sorry still trying to get my head round what you are trying to say with this double negative.
      The majority of Scottish people identify as Scottish before British- the census tells us this – is this what are trying to say?
      55% of Scots voted against political independence in 2014 and polls show country is now split 50/50 on this. Demographics indicate support for Yes will rise in coming years.
      The Scottish electorate returned a parliament under FPTP with a majority to hold a second referendum- Westminster does not accept it is up to Scottish electorate to decide whether they should vote on independence.
      Scotland voted to stay in EU, and has been dragged out with no say on the matter.
      Many Labour politicians were ambivalent about setting up a Scottish Parliament and now SNP have been in power see it as the cause of upsurge in support for independence.
      Most Tory politicians would do away with Holyrood if they were given the chance.
      Westminster will fight tooth and nail against giving up more meaningful powers especially with regard to resources such as energy for obvious reasons.
      These are the basic facts on where we stand at present.
      There should be a twin track approach of showing Scottish people the benefits that would flow from being independence and highlighting how much Westminster is holding Scotland back.
      The Yes side needs to win minds rather than hearts to win next independence referendum.
      The fact that majority of Scots consider themselves exclusively or primarily Scottish shows that and I assume this is what you mean by ‘not feeling independent’?
      What is independence you ask I suggest you only need to look at the various independent nations in Western Europe to gain an idea of what an independent Scotland would look like.
      Unlike yourself I do not think we should be accommodating Westminster any more as support for independence is growing and history would show how much the British state is willing to compromise when giving up power.
      Westminster is really worried about ‘losing Scotland and it’s resources’ and we have never been in a stronger position politically. What is required now is determination and patience not compromise.

    3. Laurie says:

      “Not independent “ implies dependence I don’t think Scots have ever felt dependent on England (or the Uk) just part of it, which now many don’t want to be anymore.
      Therefore the argument should be about separation not independence which is a whole different argument. Laurie

  5. Laurie says:

    The problem now is that Independence is increasingly look like seperation which will be harder to sell. We have much more in common with England than we appreciate family ties and language for a start. Getting mixed up with Polish Hungarian and now Italian right wingers is getting less appealing all the time.

  6. dave says:

    Well Gordon the answer to the Header Question is so Easy; ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The NU-S.N.P. are led by British leaders F.M. Sturgeon and Ian Blackford. Throw in the NU-S.N.P. CEO Mr. Murrell to compete the ‘leadership’ traitors. You indicate that Scotland is not a SOVEREIGN nation in your 3rd last paragraph. What is your purpose ? Scotland is s SOVEREIGN country. F.M. Sturgeon is the one who has floated that lie by begging for permission for a referendum which will never happen and is not needed. All that is required is a DECLARATION of independence. It surprises me that all authors are afraid to state that. Or are they union sleepers?

    1. Mr E says:

      Yes, the SNP are far too conservative to openly defy Westminster, ever. That’s the obvious answer to the question that the article doesn’t even adress for some reason. Sinn Fein openly defy Westminster by not rocking-up, but that was instigated when they were revolutionary Marxist-Leninists and now they just do it out of habit. At the other end, UKIP openly defied the EU parliament by not rocking-up.

      1. Alec Lomax says:

        The kippers protested at the European Parliament by turning their backsnon a performance of Beethoven’s Ode to joy. Ignorant philistine twats.

        1. Mr E says:

          Yes, the SNP are far too conservative to ever turn their backs to God Save the King. They are more conservative than Ukip was.

          1. Alec Lomax says:

            You equate God Save the King with Beethoven’s 9th ?

          2. Mr E says:

            They are both used as anthems and they are both very agricultural pieces of music.

          3. Mr E says:

            Funnily enough, God Save the King and Ode To Joy have similar musical structures, and both very bang-bang-crash.

          4. 221011 says:

            https://youtu.be/S9yCEvjIs9c

            The melody that Beethoven played with here of has provided the basis for various patriotic songs. It was used for the imperial anthem of Russia, Молитва русских, from 1816 to 1833 and for that of Germany, ‘Heil dir im Siegerkranz’, from 1871 to 1918, and it continues to be used for the national anthem of Liechtenstein, ‘Oben am jungen Rhein’, and the royal anthem of Norway, ‘Kongesangen’. It’s also used for the American patriotic song ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’ (aka ‘America’) and the Swiss ‘Rufst du, mein Vaterland’.

            The current ‘Peace’ version of the British national anthem was approved by the Privy Council in 1919. The Church of Scotland’s version has an alternative third verse.

    2. Alec Lomax says:

      Scotland awaits Alba Party to lead us to freedom ! Lol.

  7. Robbie says:

    Agree 100% with your last post JP58 ,Scottish first then British depending on situation , I like the phrase determination and patience I’m sure that will work.

  8. Wul says:

    Reminds me of the gobbledegook “reviews” that NME used to publish in the 1980’s. No context, no narrative or connective thread in this piece. A hotch-potch of snippets tipped out of someone else’s brain. Perhaps the author is more used to twitter? Or perhaps I’m just too thick to get it.
    Thanks anyway.

    1. SleepingDog says:

      @Wul, although my impression of Twitter is that sources are better hyperlinked there to statements, multimedia employed to better effect, and typically it is better structured and categorised. I am not sure what this incoherent series is intended to achieve, what standard it hopes to set.

      1. Wul says:

        Yeah, fair point about Twitter and the links and all that.

        Maybe I missed the intro to this series and therefore the “angle” they are coming from. I can’t understand what point the author is trying to make. Probably just me.

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