Galloway Smashes Scottish Separatists with Stellar Speech in the Spectator

ruggedtoast

George Galloway I think summed up the Yes campaign well. For all the 'bitter together' jibes and ad hominem attacks the splitters fire off at the behest of their bilious commanders in the SNP, it is really Yes whose ugly side is being brought out the more they fail to gain headway.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/scottish-independence-george-galloways-stirring-speech-in-defence-of-the-union-9566418.html

If Scotland votes Yes in September you will be handing the prize for which 100 years the SNP has fought.

They have fought for it despite everything and anything that was happening. When London was burning under the Blitz, their poet laureate (Hugh) MacDiarmid said: “London is burning, I don’t care.” They said it was England’s war.

They want you to refight a battle 700 years ago between two French-speaking kings with Scottish people on both sides.

I prefer to remember a rather more recent battle when this small island of English-speaking people stood alone and if we had not stood but capitulated like others had done before us we would be having this meeting in German if we were going to have it at all.

And not one person asked in that summer and autumn of 1940 and into 1941 if the pilots who were spinning above us defending us from invasion from the barbaric horde were from Suffolk or Sutherland. We were people together on a small piece of rock with 300 years of common history. That’s what they want to break up and all the rest is balderdash. That’s the truth of it.

How come so few women are in favour of independence? Why are Scotland’s women the most resistant of all the demographics in this contest? And the reason is that women simply don’t like gambling.

And everything in their (the Yes campaign’s) project is about gambling – for your future, your pension, your children and their children’s future. And you are right not to like gambling.

But just a few hundred yards from here on the North Bridge, one of Scotland’s women, one of our highest achieving women in the history of our entire country, JK Rowling sat in a caf! and wrote books that people all over the world love.

And what happened when she dared to opine as to how people should vote in September? She was subjected to a torrent of abuse and hatred online and in the post.

And that is the second reason why women don’t like independence – because they can see that it has already generated and will generate a politics of grudge and division based on where one stood.

I am tired of being called a quisling or a traitor or – I was ordered last night from the rougher end of the trade - “get back to England”

I’ll go wherever I like in these islands or anywhere else and speak my mind and you see that is the authentic voice of those that seek to break up this country.

I have been divorced more than once. Trust me it is never ever amicable, whatever anybody tells you. But you can make a deal. You can give the partner who is walking out on you all the CDs the DVDs, the dog, the car – you can give them everything, but the one thing you will never ever give them is the right to continue to use the joint credit card.

And that is what their plan A – and they have no plan B – amounts to.

They want to use a currency issued by the Bank of England – the clue being in the name; they want to continue to use it and they imagine that the people that issue it will allow them to do so; to use the joint credit card, even though and as they are walking out the door.

So this is the first time ever that people in a small country, where everyone speaks the same language, are being asked to break up and break up on the basis that they don’t have a currency to use.

There will be no pound. Trust me on that. I came yesterday from Parliament (where) the leaders of the mainstream parties have not changed their minds. An independent Scotland will not have the pound.

What will it have instead? The euro – how’s that going? Anybody fancy that or are we going to bring back the groat?

I see one or two pensioners here, or people close to pensionable age. How do you fancy your pension in groats? How do you fancy a pension that is based entirely on the absolutely unstable price of a commodity that will be finished in 2050?

And in my lifetime oil has been as low as $9 a barrel and as high as $156 a barrel. Who wants to mortgage their children and their children’s future on a finite resource that will soon be finished and the price of which is simply un-calculable? Un-calculable.

There will be havoc if you vote Yes in September. Havoc in Edinburgh and throughout the land and you will break the hearts of many others too.

Because, as I look at my fellow debaters on my side, I was reminded of the Duke of Wellington reviewing his own troops before the battle of Waterloo: “I don’t know what they do to the enemy but they don’t half frighten me.” “The difference is we have come together but temporarily at a moment of national peril.

The nationalists on the other hand are permanently together for they have only one purpose – to persuade you that [Stagecoach Group transport firm founder and prominent Yes campaigner] Brian Souter, the gay-baiting billionaire, funder of their campaign is someone more worthy of looking up to than JK Rowling.

I know which side I’m on. I’m with JK Rowling. Just say No.

In my opinion it is probably good for Scotland that this is coming up. There is no place for the atavistic tribal prejudice of the nationalists in a modern plural country.

If Scotland does go independent as a result of the referendum it will be as a momentous back turning exercise. A new nation turning its back on progress, plurality, neighbourliness, and having any kind of economic policy other than sucking oil out of the ground and demanding (unlikely) concessions from England.

What a shame that even 40% of people seem to think this is a good idea. What on earth is going on up there?

beecher2

ruggedtoast wrote: »

If Scotland does go independent as a result of the referendum it will be as a momentous back turning exercise. A new nation turning its back on progress, plurality, neighbourliness, and having any kind of economic policy other than sucking oil out of the ground and demanding (unlikely) concessions from England.

What a shame that even 40% of people seem to think this is a good idea. What on earth is going on up there?

I suggest you find out what's going on up here as your description of a future independent Scotland is absolutely nothing like the one I and many others envisage.

I don't really rate George Galloway's views - he was the worst MP I've ever had and never seemed to interested in anything other than his own ego.

BillJones

Despite the protestations on here when the subject is brought up, I do truly believe that it is a strand of anti-English sentiment that is fuelling the separatist campaign. The language, the anger when an English person has a view, the outrage that England may display some backbone afterwards and not give the new country everything that they want, these are not the arguments that come from a reasoned debate about where our future lies.

BillJones

beecher2 wrote: »

I suggest you find out what's going on up here as your description of a future independent Scotland is absolutely nothing like the one I and many others envisage.

And there we have it, straight away, the accusation that if someone disagrees with the "yes" campaign that they are ignorant. It can't be that they are informed but differ, they must not know what they are talking about.

I know whats going on up there. I understand the arguments, and I can see all of the dishonest tactics that have been used this far to even get the "yes" side to poll even vaguely close to the no one in the polls. If it was the will of the scots to leave, there would have been no need to distort the vote as has happened so far, or to try to distort it even further. If it is even vaguely close, then we can see that as a ringing endorsement of the people's will to stay together.

beecher2

I'm not saying that the OP is ignorant because he disagrees with me, I'm saying he's ignorant because he's making baseless points which have no evidence. Of course if you think someone who says 'what on earth is going on up there' has a better understanding than someone who has attended countless meetings and discussed the referendum with people on a daily basis for months, then fair enough.

I struggle to understand why so many people think this is all about England - it is about Scotland, the people who live here and who is best placed to make decisions about the running of the country. I do believe that anyone who views the debate through such narrow vision, shows a complete lack of understanding of the debate.

ruggedtoast

beecher2 wrote: »

I'm not saying that the OP is ignorant because he disagrees with me, I'm saying he's ignorant because he's making baseless points which have no evidence. Of course if you think someone who says 'what on earth is going on up there' has a better understanding than someone who has attended countless meetings and discussed the referendum with people on a daily basis for months, then fair enough.

I struggle to understand why so many people think this is all about England - it is about Scotland, the people who live here and who is best placed to make decisions about the running of the country. I do believe that anyone who views the debate through such narrow vision, shows a complete lack of understanding of the debate.

We would probably understand it better then, if people such as yourselves were able to explain why you want to be independent.

So far its a nebulous argument that dances around economic improvement, wanting a government down the road, not wanting to share any oil revenue, not liking the tories. All kinds of things great and small, but oddly nothing in print about the thing that unites an awful lot of nationalists. Dislike of people who arent of their nationality, or in this case, the English.

beecher2

ruggedtoast wrote: »

We would probably understand it better then, if people such as yourselves were able to explain why you want to be independent.

So far its a nebulous argument that dances around economic improvement, wanting a government down the road, not wanting to share any oil revenue, not liking the tories. All kinds of things great and small, but oddly nothing in print about the thing that unites an awful lot of nationalists. Dislike of people who arent of their nationality, or in this case, the English.

I'll be honest - I spend my energy talking to people who have the vote, rather than posting much on here re Scottish independence. My reasons are fairly simple: I believe the decisions about how best to run Scotland should be made in Scotland. I believe we should have a government we've voted for, and that we're just as capable of running reserved issues as we are devolved.

I am gobsmacked that you'd think Scottish nationalism has anything to do with where people were born. It is about the people of Scotland, not the people who were born here! I know people who were born in many different countries (including England!) who will vote yes in September. Where do you get the idea that 'an awful lot' of nationalists dislike the English?!

beecher2

edit: just to add, the political scene in Scotland at the moment is absolutely fantastic - I can't remember a time when so many people talked politics. Everywhere you go, people are discussing issues and there's a real energy and positivity about the place which really isn't being reported. From reading some of the threads on here, you'd think it is an angry ill- tempered and antagonistic debate which just couldn't be further from my experience of grassroots campaigning.

No matter what happens in September, I think groups such as Women for Independence and the National Collective are going to keep working - you can't put the genie back.

CLAPTON

beecher2 wrote: »

My reasons are fairly simple: I believe the decisions about how best to run Scotland should be made in Scotland.

like

-your monetary policies which will be made in London initially and then made in Brussels

-your immigration policy that will be made in Brussels

-and your current racist Uni fees policy will be reversed by Brussels

beecher2

CLAPTON wrote: »

like

-your monetary policies which will be made in London initially and then made in Brussels

-your immigration policy that will be made in Brussels

-and your current racist Uni fees policy will be reversed by Brussels

I was asked my reasons, and I've given them.

Fees policy is based on residence, not race or nationality. Scottish students studying in England have to pay fees.

BTW, what is the positive case for voting no? I've yet to hear it.

Generali

beecher2 wrote: »

BTW, what is the positive case for voting no? I've yet to hear it.

Scotland remains part of one of the most successful countries that the world has seen during the last 300 years.

A yes is throwing all that away just so the decision as to whether to reopen the Dumfries to Stranraer railway should be taken in London or Edinburgh.