Establishing an Independent Scotland

Whitehall mandarins, Unionist politicians and their Luddite supporters will tell you it will be a long and torturous process over many years and it must be this way because the relationship Scotland has with the rest of the UK is too complex to untangle in a shorter period.

But if Czechoslovakia could be split up in six months in 1992, why should the process of establishing an independent Scotland be such a hardship?

 

The Velvet Revolution

World War I lasted four years, World War II lasted six. So is it easier to conquer then lose an entire continent than to separate two jurisdictions peacefully?

Czechoslovakia, not only transformed from a socialist republic and a Soviet satellite to liberal democracy, but it also successfully split peacefully into two nations.

The pivotal elections that took place in 1992 saw an even split of voters in both of the constituent parts of Czechoslovakia. Tension arose and the leaders of both constituent regions agreed the federation should be split. An agreement was signed on 26th August 1992.

By 13th November 1992, a law had been enacted as to how the federal assets were going to be divided and twelve days later, an act was passed that set the dissolution date on 31st December 1992.

Complex matters such as the continuity of government, continuity of laws, arrangements for courts and so on were all swiftly determined by December 1992.

A new Czech Constitution was passed on 16th December 1992.

Czechoslovakia was dissolved at midnight on 31 December 1992. 

When the people woke up on 01 January 1993, they had new nationalities.

Within a mere six months, a comprehensive settlement had been agreed and activated.

Immobile assets were distributed to the country where they sat, mobile assets and assets abroad were distributed according to the rough population ratio

Amendments to international treaties signed by Czechoslovakia were negotiated and signed very quickly by both new republics, confirming the continuation of such treaties.

In 1996, the two countries signed a protocol specifying the distribution of duties enshrined by treaties signed as Czechoslovakia.

All of this happened whilst Czechoslovakia and its constituent countries were undergoing a massive economic transformation.

Czechoslovakia was privatizing on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented pace.

In a way, it was like Brexit and the UK’s 1980s privatizations combined, only a lot more complicated.

Whereas the 1980s UK privatized two companies a year, the early 1990s Czechoslovakia privatized two companies an hour.

Taken together, these companies’ accounting value was a big share of GDP. The voucher privatization alone (there were other methods of privatization) privatized companies worth one-third of Czechoslovak GDP.

And let us not forget the fact that Czechoslovakia was also a currency union.

The original idea was that the currency would continue after the separation, but the Czechoslovak koruna outlived Czechoslovakia by a mere six weeks.

All of this was taking place at the exact same time the republics were being separated. Where there is a will, there is a way.

 

 

Two things made this possible:

The leaders’ insistence that it must happen fast before organized business interests and/or government could mount a successful defence of the status quo.

Then the fact that the two newly-created governments, for all the tension between them, successfully worked together to apply current or previous arrangements in good faith.

Wherever questions or differences arose, they sought an amicable solution where none of the parties would score a win for their side but rather one where future cooperation would be maintained.

Nobody was proposing divorce bills or ridiculous notions of planes not flying, trucks stuck at the border, licenses not being recognized, or one country continuing to have jurisdiction over the other for the next 100 years.

Time and good faith were of the essence.

If Czechs and Slovaks were able to separate in six months, surely Westminster and Holyrood can find a way to extract one the other in a similar time period?

 

 

My previous blog on this guy

https://caltonjock.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/tory-mp-for-gordon-colin-clark-the-multi-millionaire-elected-by-deluded-voters-in-the-north-east-of-scotland-promised-much-delivered-little/

The Update – Colin Clark – With his eyes on a peerage

Clark is hoping voters in the Gordon constituency will forget he failed to support the Scottish Tory leadership in their disagreements with Boris Johnson’s hardline no-deal Brexit policy.

His actions assisted Johnson with his strategy, which was designed to force Ruth Davidson to resign from her role as leader of the Scottish Tories.

And he was rewarded for his backstabbing with a job at the Scottish Office working under his co-conspirator Alister Jack who replaced David Mundell.

Jack and Clark are the only Scottish MPs to be blessed with a role in Johnson’s, Scottish Office government but Clark got a kick in the teeth when he was told that the Worcester MP Robin Walker had also been given a ministerial role at Dover House, an appointment giving him the honour of being first English MP to work at the Scotland Office since the 19th century.

Adding insult to injury Clark was also told Walker, as a junior minister would be paid around £25K a year but Clark given the title of parliamentary undersecretary at the Scotland Office, as well as being appointed as a junior whip will need to work for nothing since the positions to which he had been appointed did not exist.

(Johnson is permitted to appoint up to 115 ministers to government posts at an annual cost to the taxpayer of around £10million)

Yet only a few months before Clark was singing his praises about Davidson’s achievements as a leader and even after getting her out.

He and his fellow conspirators compounded their abuse of their ex-leader by sending out tens of thousands of mailshots with her picture emblazoned prominently, with a personal plea asking voters to vote for her.

But she is not their leader. Johnson is. But his popularity is so low in Scotland any use of his image was vetoed by the media moguls that control the party and its policies.

And all this from an MP who effectively told the voters of Gordon, (who recorded one of the highest remain votes total in the European Referendum) to get stuffed.

Even the fish markets and fishermen, who supported his election as their MP have deserted him now that the Tory fisheries policy has been revealed.

Ports in Scotland are in danger of being run down with fish transfers from ship to shore relocated to Europe to avoid high tariffs.

What are the Tories and Lib/Dems protecting

In Scotland, quotas for species such as herring and mackerel have been bought up by a handful of families.

Two-fifths of the entire Scottish catch by value and 65 per cent by tonnage was landed by 19 powerful super-trawlers in 2016.

More than half (13) of the top 25 quota holders have directors, shareholders, or vessel partners who were convicted of offences in Scotland’s £63m “blackfish” scam – a huge, sophisticated fraud that saw trawlermen and fish processors working together to evade quota limits and land 170,000 tonnes of undeclared herring and mackerel.

Small-scale coastal fishermen, who operate 80 per cent of Scottish boats, have to make do with just one per cent of quotas.

Despite the pleas of smaller concerns the new bill failed to bring forward any redistribution of the UK’s existing quota rights. So the ultra-large companies owned by a small domestic Tory Party supporting elite who behaved so badly retain their monopoly over fishing catches in Scotland.

The shadow environment secretary said Tory ministers needed to take “urgent action to use the powers that they have domestically to redistribute fishing quota to deliver a fairer deal for smaller boats”.

“Fishing was the poster child of the Leave campaign and [environment secretary Michael] Gove has already broken promises he made to the industry to secure full control of our waters during the transition,” she continued. “With all the talk of ‘take back control’, ministers have the power to distribute UK quota now and put the smaller-scale fleet first. So why wasn’t it mentioned in their white paper?

“This shows that, while it points the fingers at others, this Tory government is to blame for a sector rigged in the interests of the super-rich. Any future fishing policy must consider how new and existing quota can be more fairly distributed and we will treat this as a priority in the upcoming fisheries bill.”

The rich Tory-supporting fishing families of Scotland

Alexander Buchan and family. Estimated worth: £147m. The family’s Peterhead-based Lunar Fishing Company owns or controls 8.9% of the UK’s quota holdings (739,153 FQAs), making it the biggest quota holder in the UK.

Robert Tait and family. Estimated worth: £115m. The family’s Klondyke Fishing Company is the UK’s third-largest quota holder, with 6.1% of the UK total (506,953 FQAs).

Sir Ian Wood and family. Estimated worth: £1.7bn. (a fortune built largely on oil and gas services). Sir Ian’s fishing business, JW Holdings, holds 1% of the UK’s fishing quota (83,463 FQAs) and has minority investments in businesses/partnerships that hold a further 2.3% (192,169 FQAs).

This is well worth a read:

(https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/10/11/fishing-quota-uk-defra-michael-gove/)

5 May 2018: leaked paper shows Tories want to trade away fishing

UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove had been expected to publish the white paper on the fisheries policy for leaving the EU in December last year but has yet to do so. A leaked draft commits the UK Government to consult the Scottish Government on fisheries decisions with Mr Gove retaining the final say.

Banffshire and Buchan Coast MSP Stewart Stevenson, SNP, said the paper was evidence the Conservatives still regarded Scottish fishing as expendable.

“The Tories’ White Paper utterly fails to deliver the control over our waters and who catches fish in them that was promised in the Brexit referendum,” he said. “It confirms the Tories want to keep control in London so they can again trade away our fishermen’s rights as part of their Brexit negotiations – as they have already begun to do.

“It’s even worse than taking fishing powers away from Scotland for seven years as threatened in the UK Withdrawal Bill. This is a bid to permanently remove control over fishing from Scotland’s fishermen.

“The Tories infamously described Scotland’s fishing industry as ‘expendable’ on our way into the EU – this proves beyond all doubt they plan to do the same on the way out.” (Press & Journal,)

6 Jun 2018: Peterhead fish processing could be relocated to Poland after Brexit, expert warns

MPs on Westminster’s Scottish affairs committee heard the warning from Kristen Hopewell, a senior lecturer in international political economy on trade at Edinburgh University. She said:

“companies had already moved to the north-east from Norway in order to access the EU market and are likely to move again, even in the event of a soft Brexit. Norway does not have the same kind of tariff-free access that Scotland and the UK has and that is part of the reason Norway moved a lot of its fish processing to Scotland. If Scotland all of a sudden faces a very high tariff on its exports, that could have profoundly negative impacts on the Scottish fish processing industry. We may well see Scotland’s fish processing industry move to places like Poland in order to access the rest of the market tariff-free.” (Press & Journal.)

Small boat owners are being starved out of business. Their spokesman said:

“Inshore fishermen are facing a crisis never witnessed before. And the merchants that they supply are in utter despair at the difficulties that lie ahead.

Creel and dive fishermen working these small boats are horrified that the interests of the few owners of deep-sea fishing vessels are being put above the interests of the many. Of Scotland’s 2,089 fishing boats, 1,539 of them are under 10 metres (33ft) long – too small to go beyond the 12-mile limit that marks the edge of our inshore waters.

They have little to gain and much to lose from Brexit. European boats are already excluded from our inshore waters, so there will be no new fishing opportunities for us after Brexit.

Instead, there will be tariffs on our shellfish products and the strong possibility of our fresh produce going bad in the lorry parks of Dover as they wait to access Europe – our main market.

Shame on the quota barons for saying Brexit is a sea of opportunities. Self-interest and greed have been displayed in copious amounts, with little or no regard to those that may suffer.” (Press & Journal)

20 Mar 2018: Fishing sector’s fury over Tory Government’s Brexit ‘betrayal’

The UK Government was last night facing a furious backlash after sanctioning a “massive sell-out” of the Scottish fishing industry in its interim Brexit deal.

Fishing leaders branded the decision to “capitulate” to EU demands that Britain continues to abide by its hated quotas during the two-year transition as a “disgusting betrayal” and “extremely harmful”. (Press & Journal)

21 Mar 2018: Fresh fishing pledge from UK ministers amid backlash over ‘unforgivable’ deal

Michael Gove appealed for Tory rebels and furious fishermen to keep their “eyes on the prize” yesterday as he promised full fisheries control by the end of 2020. The under-fire UK environment secretary was warned of “palpable anger” in fishing communities over a Brexit transition deal which will keep the UK in the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) (Press & Journal)

20 Nov 2019: Fergus Ewing warns Fishing communities facing ‘extremely challenging picture’ ahead of talks

Looking ahead to annual negotiations that will determine catch and quota limits for the coming year, Mr Ewing warned jobs and livelihoods are at stake in the Brussels talks. He said:

“scientific advice published by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) were testing for fishing communities. We have got a lot to lose.
reductions have been advised for whiting, saithe and hake, while zero catch advice remains in place for cod and whiting on the west coast. Advice on North Sea cod recommends a 61% reduction in catches next year, which will result in an “immediate and severe choke risk”. (A choke species is a type of fish with a low quota that can cause a vessel to stop fishing even if they still have quota for other species.)

Ewing also clashed with the Tories over their view that Brexit would result in regaining control over UK waters enabling fishermen to leave the “hated” Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Ewing accused the Tories of promising the “earth, moon and stars” a no-deal Brexit would result in “bankruptcies” as a result of the need for certificates to export fish, which could cost up to £15 million. (Press & Journal)

20 Nov 2019: Scottish fishing chief warns of looming crisis for the inshore fleet

In a strongly worded “Brexit Situation Statement” Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation (SCFF) (which represents creel fishers and comprises nearly three-quarters of the country’s inshore commercial fishing fleet) national co-ordinator Alistair Sinclair claimed that the much-vaunted benefits of the break-up for Scotland’s fishing industry were “only for the few”.

He said:

“Those who stand to gain most from exiting the EU are wringing their hands in delight at the prospect. But let us consider those within coastal communities who stand to lose most, many with the real prospect of losing their markets and livelihoods.

Scotland’s inshore fleet of small fishing boats supplies Europe with the finest shellfish – widely acknowledged to be the best in the world, sourced from the ‘best wee country in the world’.

These inshore fishermen are facing a crisis never witnessed before. And the merchants that they supply are in utter despair at the difficulties that lie ahead. Creel and dive fishermen working these small boats are horrified that the interests of the few owners of deep-sea fishing vessels are being put above the interests of the many.

Of Scotland’s 2,089 fishing boats, 1,539 of them are under 10 metres (33ft) long – too small to go beyond the 12-mile limit that marks the edge of our inshore waters.

They have little to gain and much to lose from Brexit. European boats are already excluded from our inshore waters, so there will be no new fishing opportunities for us after Brexit.

Instead, there will be tariffs on our shellfish products and the strong possibility of our fresh produce going bad in the lorry parks of Dover as they wait to access Europe – our main market.

Shame on the quota barons for saying Brexit is a sea of opportunities. Self-interest and greed have been displayed in copious amounts, with little or no regard to those that may suffer.” (Press & Journal).

3 Dec 2019: Fishing industry boss claims Tories do not have ‘credible vision’ for the future of the sector

Fraserburgh-based William Tait SNR, who is a director at the Klondyke Fishing Company, has cast doubt over Boris Johnson’s pledge to take the UK out of the common fisheries policy and has warned that the Tories would “disregard fishing in Scotland and trade away opportunities”.

He called on fishermen in the north-east to now back the SNP at December’s election. (Press & Journal).

GROK report here:

https://x.com/i/grok/share/khxAGGfmC5xAaowcmFOqyhDom

 

 

 

Ross, Skye, and Lochaber

A Unionist party pact to oust Ian Blackford has been put in place

The other unionist parties are of the view that Craig Harrow, the Liberal Democrat candidate, has the best chance of unseating the SNP and are standing aside giving him a clear run at it.

The Tories finished second in the last GE, but the seat, formerly held by the late Charles Kennedy was at one time considered to be a safe Liberal Democrat seat.

The choice of Harrow as their candidate reveals the nasty side of a party which is abusing the legacy of the Late Charles Kennedy as justification for selecting him.

Harrow’s opening address to the electors was:

“I am campaigning in place of my late dear friend Charles Kennedy and my election would be a fitting tribute to his memory. I am determined to win the parliamentary seat back from the SNP in a way that Charles would be proud of. We need an uplifting, positive campaign for the Highlands and Islands.”

What a load of twaddle!!!

I doubt Charles Kennedy would have campaigned for election with the byword Fix!Fix!Fix attached to it.

Yukky tactics but asymptomatic of the Liberal Democrats who being Westminster Whigs in disguise are the sleaziest operators in politics.

 

 

 

Followers of my blog will remember this one:

“https://caltonjock.com/2014/08/31/yes-campaign-faced-the-might-of-the-abbotsford-team-actively-backed-by-the-entire-uk-political-system-the-civil-service-media-barons-commercial-and-financial-institutions-the-city-of/”

The Yes campaign faced the might of – The Abbotsford Team ( actively backed by the entire UK political system, the civil service, media barons, commercial and financial institutions, The City of London, Heads of State and senior politicians of countries worldwide and just about anyone or anything that David Cameron and Sir Jeremy Heywood could muster in their mission to deny Scotland it’s rightful place in the world as an independent country.)

The Liberal Democrats showed their true colours with this abuse of the Scottish electorate

13 May 2014: The Con/Dem Government handed a £30,000 taxpayer-funded PR contract to the company of a “Better Together” boss.

Questions have been raised after it emerged the UK cabinet office had paid the sum to “Engine Partners for “communication support” in January 2014.

The work is understood to be related to the UK Government’s campaign against Scottish independence. Craig Harrow, the convener of the Scottish Lib Dems and director of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, is in charge of the firm’s Edinburgh operations.

Harrow, 45, has been masterminding the Lib Dem’s drive for a No vote and was a founding member of the “Better Together” campaign. In addition to his role as party convener, he has also acted as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander’s election agent.

Records from Companies House show Harrow’s company, MHP Communications, of which he is the Chief Executive, forms part of Engine Partners UK.

Harrow stated that he did not have responsibility for any part of the contract, but the company’s website lists Harrow as the Edinburgh contact for all business inquiries.

Engine’s Edinburgh office is at 3 Melville Crescent – right beside the Lib Dem-run Scotland Office’s HQ in the Scottish capital.

The SNP said the revelations expose the UK Government to a charge that it is dishing out “Scottish taxpayers money to an organization with unarguable links to the “Better Together” campaign which is illegal under the rules of the Independence referendum.

And I’ll take bets that the money was not declared to the Electoral Commission, as income and expenditure.

 

 

 

SNP challenges the Westminster government abuse of financial regulations

The revelation that Harrow was also the managing director of PR firm MHP Communications, operating from the same office accommodation as Engine Partners UK, was the straw that broke the camels back for the SNP who demanded answers, saying:

“As well as £46,500 on secret polling, it now emerges that the Con/Dem UK Government has given £30,000 of public money to a company run by the Convener of the Lib Dems in Scotland. Harrow is also a founding Director of the “No” campaign and r’s election agent – and his office just happens to be next door to the Scotland Office. The Westminster Establishment is entitled to campaign for a “No” vote, but it is not entitled to parcel public money round their friends as if it were their own. There needs to be full disclosure of this secret spending, the publication of exactly what it bought, and both Danny Alexander and Willie Rennie need to tell us what they knew about it.”

An anonymous spokesman for the Treasury said:

“The Chief Secretary (Danny Alexander) was not involved in the appointment of “Engine Partners” to provide consultancy to the government. Harrow had no role in running the account. All spending in relation to the government’s work on undertaking analysis, communications, and research associated with the future of the United Kingdom has been made in full compliance with all relevant processes and procedures. The government remains committed to keeping the United Kingdom together and is focused on ensuring that the people of Scotland have access to the information and arguments that they need to make that crucial decision.”

The revelations came after it emerged that the Con/Dem government at Westminster also paid £46,550 to pollsters Ipsos Mori for “market research on attitudes in Scotland towards Scottish independence”.

Alex Salmond demanded that Scottish taxpayers’ money had been misused and at the very least the results of these surveys should be published. But the spokesman for the Con/Dem government at Westminster said it was “not usual practice” to publish internal polling. In other words, get stuffed Alex!!!

I did say the Liberal Democrats were sleazy but so blatant were these abuses of public finance in support of a political campaign by the Con/Dem government, Abuse of the Scottish electorate is commonplace with Westminster governments they got away with it, courtesy of the BBC and the Scottish, right-wing media who were well aware that the Con/Dem government had not even been economical with the truth. The brazenly lied to Scots.

 

 

MHP Communications a major player in the Government Lobbies at Westminster

But Harrow is no second rate gopher for the Liberal Democrats. In a submission to the Westminster “Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee” on 14 January 2014 he wrote:

“MHP Communications is one of the UK’s largest full-service communications agencies, employing 175 people in offices in London, Edinburgh, Brussels, Hong
Kong, the Middle East, and Washington DC.

With around 55 people working in the public affairs discipline, MHP has the biggest practice in the UK. We are long-standing members of the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) and members of the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and other bodies.

Craig Harrow, Managing Director, MHP Communications (Edinburgh). No shrinking violet then are you Craig?

 

 

 

Engine Acquisitions Reviewed

The political lobbying company was created by a management buy out, in 2004. It quickly added to its resources with the acquisition of a string of marketing services companies involved in interactive, branded content, sponsorship and direct marketing.

The Parent entity “Engine Group” was created as the umbrella for these different units, and operated as an integrated group offering a complete range of interlinked marketing services.

After a series of losses over a number of years, the agency’s marketing department was struggling but at the same time, the company greatly expanded its services, offering, launching or acquiring a string of marketing services subsidiaries through its corporate parent,the “Engine” Group, which held ownership of the entire agency and its various associated subsidiaries.

Although the service units remained to be standalone branded, they worked closely with one another to provide what was effectively a seamless integrated service, depending on the requirements of individual clients.

2013, annual accounts stated that more than half of “Engine’s” revenue had been generated from clients using two or more Engine subsidiaries.

(this is what the deal was in Edinburgh)

In July 2014, Venture capitalist company “Lake Capital” purchased 100% of the business for around £100m then injected its large US marketing-based investments into the group.

Lake Capital’s Terry Graunke is chairman of Engine Group. Kasha Cacy, previously CEO of UM USA, was appointed as global CEO of Engine in 2018. Engine Creative CEO Ete Davies.

Financials: Annual turnover for this American owned company ranges between £120m – £150m providing annual profits of £95m +

The good people of Ross, Skye, and Lochaber need to be informed and/or reminded of the political misconduct of Craig Harrow. Before the General Election.  Otherwise, they may well fall for the hype and get stuck with a Whig.

 

 

 

Jan 2021: Aberdeen Tory Council Leader Lumsden wants to separate Aberdeen from Edinburgh and has written to the Chancellor seeking direct funding from Westminster bypassing the Scottish Government which controls council spending in Scotland

 

Lumsden wrote:

“The consequentials received from the UK Government to the devolved Scottish Government, thanks to spending in education or in health in England, are not necessarily being spent on these issues by the SNP here. This has led to funding shortfalls in both our NHS and education. I wonder if you would consider… devolving finances direct to the 32 Scottish local authorities in respect of any more financial aid relating to COVID-19 and in respect of UK Barnett consequentials. I am sure, like me, you will be worried that all the good work from the UK Government to support businesses in Scotland is being undone by the incompetent devolved Scottish Government.”

(https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1391438/SNP-news-Aberdeen-independence-Nicola-Sturgeon-Douglas-Lumsden-funding-Holyrood)

 

2019: The General Election

Douglas Lumsden, co-leader of Aberdeen City Council, was the Tory candidate for Aberdeen South,  replacing the disgraced Ross Thomson who had been forced to stand down.

In his sales pitch to the electorate Lumsden said:  “I  want to first pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of Ross Thomson over the past two years. He has made a personal decision to step down, but he has always been a great champion for this city.”  Utter guff!!!

In the absence of a manifesto Lumsden campaign literature studiously avoided any mention of  Brexit or Tory plans for the future of Scotland.  In one page there were10 direct attacks on the SNP, many of which addressed devolved areas, 6 personal attacks on Nicola Sturgeon and zero mentions of Brexit. And he wittered on about the SNP and independence when the SNP campaign gave the matter little attention.

He was not elected to office.

public protest against Tory Councils plans For Marischal Square ignored

 

 

2017: Aberdeen City Council Plays fast and loose with public money

Aberdeen City Council leadership accessed City of London money by selling bonds, raising £370m in November 2016 to help finance a  £1bn capital spending programme. As well as entering the bond market the Council took on a £230m long term  loan from the UK Treasury agency, The Public Works Loan Board.

Noting Lumsden’s employment history is in IT the massive financial commitment imposed by his actions, on the Aberdeen electorate raised questions over just what qualifications should be required before allowing councillors to spend public money on speculative deals.

This is relevant since the City of London financiers are a smart bunch of operators and the jungle that they survive in is no place for the inexperienced. These guys do not take prisoners and will stuff Aberdeen Council if the opportunity arises. Witnessed by the 2014 downturn in the oil industry, of which the Unionist parties made great play on during the 2014 referendum campaign, claiming the volatility of the market was such that an independent Scottish Government would not be able to survive its financial rise and fall.

Yet only three years later, with the market on the up the Tory Labour Coalition in Aberdeen exposed the city to the same rising and falling oil market. A disaster for Aberdeen in the event of another financial downturn, or City of London speculators short moneying the Council.  Large debts and insufficient finance to even meet the interest charges. Unemployment in Aberdeen could rise by around 50%.

 

 

12 Feb 2018: Aberdeen councillors to slash Council jobs

The first council staff knew of the job losses was over the internet in a statement released by the London Stock Exchange. This novel approach to telling staff their number was up has been brought about by the council raising cash on the London Stock Exchange, (at extortionate interest rates) for its many overspending grandiose development projects.

SNP group leader Stephen Flynn said:

“These job cuts are a direct result of the administration’s inability to manage the books for the last six years coupled with their blinkered desire to move to a new target operating model.”

 

 

6 Feb 2018: A newly formed “Strategic Transformation Committee” is to significantly increase its civil servant establishment and refine its £125m cuts proposals.

Recruitment partner and advertising campaign in place. 13 chief officer posts created. Salaries range from £58,000 to £85,000. New Directors already in place, salary £115k each. Total projected cost of 5 year project. £8.6m.  Crazy economics.

March 2019 Aberdeen City Council – Strategic Transformation Committee disbanded.

Removal of the Strategic Transformation Committee recognises that continuous transformation is a routine mode of operation and responsibility should be distributed across the Council’s committees as appropriate. What happened to the large expensively recruited staffing establishment? Incompetence!!!

 

 

 

Feb 2018: Yet another failed policy

Aberdeen’s Co-Council leader concedes that the policy of “contracting out” is an abject failure and many services are to be brought back in-house achieving savings of around  £17m against an annual spend of around £445million. Dogma driven councillors

 

 

Mar 2018: Aberdeen Council to introduce a cycle hire scheme in the city using European funding.

The Unionist Party’s Brexit implementation killed this before it got off the ground. Nothing in place  3 years later.

 

 

 

Aug 2019:  Aberdeen’s new exhibition and conference centre opened

Initially costed at £185m the project took 4 years to complete with a cost overrun taking the final total to £335m.

 

 

 

3 Dec 2019: Council spending on temporary agency staff has rocketed

 

 

Feb 2019: Aberdeen City Council plans to save £45m over the next year.

Public toilets, libraries and community centres and School Crossing patrollers could be axed and Council tax increased by around 5%.

 

 

2 Mar 2019: Multi-million-pound projected cost of redeveloping Union Terrace Gardens is spiralling out of control

SNP opposition councillors have said they will be voting against the park’s long-awaited transformation, which is being forced on the citizens of Aberdeen against their will.

 

 

 

2 Mar 2019: Much delayed revamp of Aberdeen Art Gallery completed

The project was completed four years late at a cost of £34.5m, well over the original £30m budget.

This is well worth a read. (https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/aberdeen-city-council-has-shown-itself-not-fit-for-purpose-whatever-that-purpose-may-be-art-gallery-what-art-gallery-etc/)

 

 

 

Mar 2019: Aberdeen City Council is spending more than £115k a day servicing loan debts – a sum higher than the £42m budget shortfall it is preparing to tackle.

 

 

Jul 2019: Aberdeen City Council bosses have taken out two new loans totalling £40million this year raising the level of city debt to more than £1billion.

 

 

Nov 2019: Cash-strapped Aberdeen City Council bosses to further  slash budgets next year only months after cutting more than £40 million from existing financial budgets.

City council bosses have already announced a radical shake-up of the local authority with the aim of saving £250 million over five years and the council will have to trim budgets by another £38 million. A cut of around 8%.  And the paper predicts deeper cuts to come – with a shortfall of £80 million predicted in 2021/22.

Opposition groups have questioned Council spending priorities – highlighting many over-spent projects and a scary certainty that Douglas Lumsden and his administration will be paying back almost £50 million interest on debt in the coming year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is the BBC?

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an autonomous corporation founded under Royal Charter providing publicly-funded television and radio broadcasting organisation, with extensive interests in programme production, newsgathering and commercial publishing.

The BBC is funded by licence fees. The level of the licence fee is set by the Government.

This method of funding seeks to ensure that the BBC’s activities are not influenced by the interests of politicians, shareholders or advertisers.

The BBC is headed by a Governing Board which is responsible for the operational management of the Corporation and for the delivery of BBC services.

The Board is led by a non-executive Chairman and consists of ten non-executive members, including the Chairman, and four executive members including the BBC’s Director-General and Editor-in-Chief, who chairs the Executive Committee.

Four of the non-executive members are specifically appointed as members for each of the nations of the UK.

The Chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The Queen.

Other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations Committee.

The BBC is subject to Public Service Broadcasting requirements under its Charter, which is reviewed every ten years.

 

 

 

Important points to note:

1. The BBC is founded under Royal Charter and is accountable only to the Queen.

2. The Queen appoints 10 of 14 people to the Board of management.

3. Its non-commercial activities are not wholly overseen by OFCOM.

4. Ofcom is accountable to the State, not politicians.

 

 

 

Censorship

The imposition of Censorship in 1937,  provided the totalitarian United Kingdom with a weapon with which it prevented the exposure of its abuse of power and privilege over Scotland.

For over 400 years the country boasting the oldest parliament and free speech muzzled Scots and systematically destroyed its communities.

In 1968 the Lord Chamberlins powers were supposedly curtailed and the nation was given the promise that there would be no more State secrets.

But the “Freedom of Information Act” is a joke. Politicians are still answerable only to parliament and information is rarely released.

Successive governments have replaced censorship with spin, an insidious development enhanced with the appointment of many hundreds of “Special Advisors” many just out of university with no political experience.

These political appointments (many the sons and daughters of party politicians) are fully financed by the State.

Compounding the abuse of the electorate they are then shortlisted as candidates in safe seats guaranteeing their political future at Westminster.

Nothing is safe in our Westminster politicians hands and Scots would be better off gaining independence and putting in place a written “Bill of Rights”.

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 2015: Is Britain going to see the return of the Lord Chamberlain?

Keen watchers of the Queen’s Speech will have noticed three things.

Firstly, the Lord Chamberlain of the Household. Now supposed to be a constitutional ornament, the Lord Chamberlain was, for the 231 years to 1968, the state’s censor in the theatre.

He (invariably he), along with a team of play readers, was able to change the text – famously returning scripts annotated with blue pencil – or prevent the showing of any play in the country designed for public audiences altogether if, in his view, it was fitting for “the preservation of good manners, and of the public peace to do so.”

Second, to be spotted was the Minister for Internet Safety and Security, a post created the week after the General Election.

Among other laudable and positive policy goals, the holder, Baroness Shields, will be responsible for delivering protection from “extremist” and “harmful” content.

The Conservative Party’s efforts in the last parliament have not been limited to the removal and prevention of illegal content – it attempted to mandate opt-out content filters at the ISP level in 2013.

Under pressure from the government, Britain’s leading ISPs are now required to retain their customer database of usage and presume they also wish content filters to be applied apply unless they explicitly request otherwise.

Thirdly and finally, the Investigatory Powers Bill (formerly known as the Communications Data Bill).

The bill contains provisions to monitor not just the information about a given communication (who sent it, to whom, from where and when it was sent) but the communication itself.

It also strengthens the powers of Ofcom to deal with broadcasters airing anything “extremist”.

The working definition of extremism is that which undermines “British values” (or, to borrow the phrase, the public peace).

The category of broadcasters, it bears mentioning, now includes on-demand services.

The Queen’s Speech this year puts these otherwise disparate developments into a theme for government.

The sum may have more profound consequences than the parts, as they indicate a direction of travel toward greater regulation.

Those of us concerned with constructive Internet regulation, guaranteeing freedom and prosperous industry, should perhaps keep half an eye on the stationery orders of the office of the Lord Chamberlain – and indeed the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – for any increase in the number of blue pencils. It may be an acid test for future developments.

3 Jun 2015: Access Partnership has expertise in many areas of government relations and regulatory affairs. (accesspartnership.com)

 

 

 

 

 

The 1707 Acts of Union supposedly joined Scotland and England together as equal partners but Janus faced England had another agenda that did not include a partnership in any shape or form.

Its motto then was and still is “to the conqueror goes the spoils. “

The situation in Scotland in 1707 mirrors events in Catalonia in 2017.

Mass protests and 90% majority against the union.

But Scotland in 2014 failed to get a majority of the electorate to support independence. And it remains uncertain there will ever be a referendum in which a majority of Scots will vote to break free from the shackles of serfdom imposed upon them by a rich and powerful English elite.

The purpose of this blog is to provide an analysis of significant events over the past 300 years exposing the cynical exposure to and the imposition of the “Stockholm Syndrome” on the People of Scotland.

The book “Highland Resistance” by Iain Fraser Grigor tells the story of anti-landlord agitation and direct-action land-raiding from the great sheep-drives in Sutherland at the end of the eighteenth century, on through the anti-eviction resistance that characterised the worst years of the notorious Clearances, and on again by way of the huge crofters’ agitation of the 1880s to continuing inter-war raiding and reform and the last great land-grab at Knoydart in the 1940s.

The aggressive and confrontational behaviour of the English government, before the signing of the 1707 Acts of Union and the brutality of the Whig government after is revealed in the book and I highly recommend it as a read.

Three extracts from the book are provided below. The content is heartrending.

Scotland will only gain freedom from England when Scots are fully aware of the systematic indoctrination and subjugation imposed upon them by a Westminster government which takes every pound from scots and gives them 10 pence in return in the form of a grant then castigates Scots as a nation of lazy, drunken, drug-taking, wife-beating, bastards who are wholly reliant upon England for handouts to survive.

 

 

 

300 + Years of Conditioning – Is it any wonder some Scots think the Union is a good thing for Scotland

As early as the 1730s, with the ink scarcely dry on the Treaty of Union, George Buchanan’s Latin histories of Scotland were alleged as unfit to be ‘put in the hands of our Scotch youth while at school, now there is a Union between the two Kingdoms, for fear of awakening that Old National Grudge, that should now be sopited [suppressed as discreditable] and industriously forgotten’.

In the second half of the same century, the government’s censors extended this animosity to the theatre.

The Lord Chamberlain’s office refused a licence for the performance of Duval’s Prince Charles Stuart, for instance, and granted permission only to plays which portrayed the Scots as quaint pastoralists or comic characters, and which ridiculed Scottish manners, character, and speech.

And by the middle of the following century, with the Knoydart Clearances satisfactorily completed, the Times could assert that ‘Scotland is a country manifestly in want of a grievance.

She labours under the weariness of attained wishes and the curse of granted prayers. Good fortune has joined her inseparably to the richest and most enterprising nation of modern times. Never was a territory north of Latitude 55 Degrees so favoured before’.

An echo of these sentiments is still found with reference to the modern Highlands. Consider a humorous item in the Daily Telegraph Peter Simple column from the autumn of 1981.

“Clackies, as these small, tough unusually ferocious dogs are called in Scotland, tend to bight anyone they can get at on sight. They were formerly used by landlords’ agents to evict crofters in the West Highlands. A couple of Clackies down the chimney would soon have the crofters and their families outside and running for their lives”.

This item was judged so excessively funny that, with an admirable economy of effort, it was reprinted fifteen months later in the same column: “In the days of the Highland clearances, they were used by landlords’ agents for evicting obstinate crofters. A couple of Clackies down the chimney had the wretches out in seconds, running for their lives in the direction of the nearest port where they might hope to get a boat for Nova Scotia”.

This same sort of pertinaciously generous humour was detectable at the Isle of Eigg “Games” in 1984.

The festivities commenced the evening prior to the Games themselves with a cricket-match (for which the proper gear and costume was plentifully supplied) on that island beach where once the Norsemen hauled their longships for easy respite from the Minch, and across which at dusk cries rang in tones appropriate to such spirit as these Games, in such a location, may be thought to represent.

The following morning, things got underway with a suitable seriousness.

“The McVaugh family had flown in from Philadelphia despite imminent business meetings in Tokyo and Paris. Distant German cousin Axel von Schellenberg had arrived that morning from Frankfurt, chartered a helicopter at Glasgow airport and landed on the croquet lawn.

The Clanranalds (led by Ranald MacDonald, Chief of Clanranald and Hereditary Chief of the Western Isles) wore kilts during the windsurfing.

The Great Eigg Campaign re-enacted the bloody struggles between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites. Barbour jackets and wine-bottles littered the verandah. Dimly I could see a figure under an enormous white pith helmet, standing in a jeep which proudly bore the Union Jack flag’.

Or consider the opinions attributed to an interviewee by Vogue magazine in the same recent period, and happily published without apparent thought given to the appropriate race-relations legislation.

According to Vogue, the traditional [sic] west-Highlander was ‘sloppy and dirty. They lie. They are fantasists with a babbling loquacity and an inability to look people in the eye’.

Or again, as another observer of this ‘traditional’ Highland scene in 1990 counselled in a local newspaper its indigent readers: ‘Local people do not want to work. They are unreliable. It is outsiders who achieve things here, not your Highlanders and Islanders.

Be less anti-English, without us you would have drifted off into the Atlantic by now’.

And yet, and yet: the record of popular struggle, of popular aspiration to some sort of cultural and national integrity, will not lie down, will not be written, or humoured, or patronized, out of its own history. Many Highland writers have born witness in recent years, and in a very direct way, to this tradition of struggle.

 

 

 

Concentration of Ownership

In the mid-1970s records revealed that:

“One hundred and forty individuals or companies owned just under half the Highlands.

Four individuals owned just under half a million acres.

Seventeen individuals or companies owned sixty-nine percent of the land of Caithness.

Thirty-eight owned eighty-four percent of the land of Sutherland.

Eighty owned fifty-seven percent of Inverness-shire.

Sixty-seven owned eighty percent of the land of Argyll.

Seventy-six owned eighty percent of the land of Ross and Cromarty.

Sixty-three owned sixty-two percent of the land of Perthshire’.

And in the early 1980s, a report on land ownership and use in the Highlands and Islands identified aged and absentee landlords as a major factor in the under-utilization of land in the area.

It added that the popular image of the absentee Highland landlord as the product of an English public school, followed by perhaps Oxbridge or the Services, was accurate.

About half of the landowners in the north of Scotland could be regarded as absentee.

Of those of who were listed in Who’s Who, more than two-thirds had attended public schools – and of the forty-six who had attended university, Oxford was almost the exclusive choice.

Many landowners had a background that included some military training and almost one-third still retained their military titles.

No less than half of the estates which had titled owners a full century earlier remained in the possession of the same family.

 

 

 

The Forestry Development Rip off

In the 1980’s entertainers and television presenters, (some of whom are still around today) milked the public purse by buying into dubious Scottish forestry schemes allowing them to get rich quick at the expense of Scottish taxpayers.The controlling factor was the was to provide tax-break schemes for the very rich.

Many experts heavily criticized the schemes as being “barely competent”. Of some proposed plantations, an added comment stated that it was “difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are simply thinly disguised deer shelters financed, in considerable measure, out of the public purse”.

One calculation put it like this:

“The gross cost of afforestation work before tax relief of grants is up to £1,000 per hectare spread over the first six years.

Of this £1,000 per hectare, the Forestry Commission gives a grant of £240.

The rest, £760, is your business loss for the year, and under tax schedule D you can claim it against tax which you are paying at 60 percent.

This means that sixty percent of the £760 comes back as tax relief, which means that something like seventy percent of the total cost – excluding the price of the land – is paid for by the taxpayer.

After a relatively small number of years – perhaps ten – the investor can then sell to an institutional purchaser like a pension fund, who have no tax incentives to plant bare land but are prepared to buy plantation land to invest in the physical growth of the crop and the inflation of land and crop values.

The investor can sell at £1,000 a hectare, which means that he gets back £1,000 on land for which he originally paid about £300”.

 

Cumberland – The Butcher of Culloden

 

 

Robert Walpole – The first Lord Chamberlin

 

 

 

1745 – George II – The Jacobites and the next 200 years

In July 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, landed in Scotland, forcing George to return to London.

The Jacobites defeated British forces in September at the Battle of Prestonpans, then moved south into England.

But support in England was negligible and much-promised French support failed to materialise.

Morale in the Scottish force was lost and faced with the imminent return to England of the army from Germany the Scots retreated back to Scotland.

In April 1746, the heavily outnumbered and outgunned Jacobites were forced to do battle at Culloden against the 12,000 strong English/European army, led by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. The ravaged Jacobite troops were heavily beaten.

There were few survivors and those that did escape were hunted down, executed and left unburied where they were found.

Charles escaped to France, but many of his supporters were caught and executed.

Jacobitism was crushed.

 

 

During the long reign of his grandson, George III, Britain’s American colonies were lost, the former colonies having formed the United States of America, but British influence elsewhere in the world continued to grow, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created by the Acts of Union 1800.

The union of Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom occurred in 1801 during the reign of King George III.

From 1811 to 1820, George III suffered a severe bout of what is now believed to be porphyria, an illness rendering him incapable of ruling.

His son, the future George IV, ruled in his stead as Prince Regent.

During the Regency and his own reign, the power of the monarchy declined, and by the time of his successor, William IV, the monarch was no longer able to effectively interfere with parliamentary power.

In 1834, William dismissed the Whig Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, and appointed a Tory, Sir Robert Peel. In the ensuing elections, however, Peel lost.

The king had no choice but to recall Lord Melbourne.

During William IV’s reign, the Reform Act 1832, which reformed parliamentary representation, was passed.

Together with others passed later in the century, the Act led to an expansion of the electoral franchise and the rise of the House of Commons as the most important branch of Parliament.

The final transition to a constitutional monarchy was made during the long reign of William IV’s successor, Victoria.

As a woman, Victoria could not rule Hanover, which only permitted succession in the male line, so the personal union of the United Kingdom and Hanover came to an end.

The Victorian era was marked by great cultural change, technological progress, and the establishment of the United Kingdom as one of the world’s foremost powers.

In recognition of British rule over India, Victoria was declared Empress of India in 1876.

However, her reign was also marked by increased support for the republican movement, due in part to Victoria’s permanent mourning and lengthy period of seclusion following the death of her husband in 1861.

Victoria’s son, Edward VII, became the first monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1901.

In 1917, the next monarch, George V, changed “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” to “Windsor” in response to the anti-German sympathies aroused by the First World War.

George V’s reign was marked by the separation of Ireland into Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Free State, an independent nation, in 1922.

 

 

Back to Sir Robert Walpole – The First Lord Chamberlin

In 1737, Sir Robert Walpole officially introduced statutory censorship, appointing himself to act as a censor of any public theatrical performance or publication.

The Act provided him with the statutory authority to veto anything for any reason, and media outlet owners could be closed down and prosecuted for staging or promoting anything that had not received the prior approval of his office.

This repressive authority remained with the office of Lord Chamberlin for the next 312 years since Members of Parliament in the House of Commons could not present changes to censorship laws because although the Lord Chamberlain exercised his authority under statute law, he was still an official whose authority was derived from the Royal Prerogative. He answers only to the Sovereign.

In 1909, a Joint Select Committee on Censorship was established and recommended that the Lord Chamberlain should continue to act as censor but the proviso that compulsory licencing should be ended.

King Edward VII refused to accept the recommendations.

The outbreak of both World Wars put an end to any parliamentary initiatives to change laws on censorship for many years.

In 1968, another Joint Select Committee debated the issue and presented a solution. This time the argument was centred around the portrayal of living and recently dead individuals, particularly in reference to the monarchy as well as politicians.

After months of heated debate, the powers of the Lord Chamberlain were supposedly repealed.

A 300 + year political battle to reduce state control over any public utterance had been won.

Those who fought to retain the legislation were determined to protect the reputation of the royal family and the political elite, not their oft-made claim to be simply protecting the integrity of the Christian state from obscenity and blasphemy.

 

 

 

 

The office of Lord Chamberlain

Is always held by a peer and a privy councillor. The present Lord Chamberlin is Earl Peel GCVO PC DL, is the eldest son of Arthur Peel, 2nd Earl Peel, and is a great-great-grandson of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.

Formerly, the Lord Chamberlain was a member of the government, appointed by the Prime Minister, and before 1782 the office carried a cabinet rank.

In 1924, when the first Labour government was in power, it was decided by George V that the office should be non-political and that the holder should be appointed “at the king’s pleasure” by agreement between the sovereign and the prime minister.

The Lord Chamberlain thus became all-powerful.

His decisions censorship could not be challenged in the House of Commons since the Lord Chamberlain was a servant of the royal household and answerable only to the sovereign.

The lord chamberlain is the second dignitary of the Royal court, whose office in St. James’s Palace where he is assisted by a sizeable group of staff under a comptroller and an assistant comptroller.

He also has charge of the Diplomatic Corps, (secret services) and all royal court business and of the arrangements for all state functions where he is always in close personal attendance of the queen.

He is a crossbench (non-party) member of the House of Lords and is the conduit of communication between The Queen and The House of Lords and presents daily addresses from the Lords to the Queen and conveys her reply to them.

The same duty is performed for the House of Commons by the Vice-Chamberlain, whose office is still a political appointment.

The vice chamberlain is a member of the government of the day.

The present office holder is the openly gay Brexit supporting, Stuart James Andrew MP, who is the Welsh-born Conservative MP for the Pudsey constituency in West Yorkshire.

 

 

 

Censorship – Walpole’s Strategic Plans for the Subjugation of Scots Unravels

Walpole and his Whigs prepared the ground by transferring taxation away from already rich landowners to the man in the street.

This paved the way for the Highland and Lowland Clearances in which nearly 25% of the Scottish population was forced from their land and sold into bondage to rich landowners in the Americas.

The lands were then illegally given over to English and Scottish peers of the realm for a pittance. Their descendants still own the land.

He then introduced censorship preventing anyone from publishing or promoting anything he considered might assist commoners to harbour any ill-will against Royalty or the Westminster government of the day.

Although supposedly repealed over 200 years later, in 1968 the powers enabling Lord Chamberlin to act in the interests of the Crown still exist.

His office and staff control a wide range of governance and are not responsible for the government of the day.

Two examples, from many thousands of censorship abuse:

1. In the 1960s the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson was secretly investigated by MI5 on the orders of????? There are so many examples of the interference of the office of Lord Chamberlin in the affairs of the country.

2. The 2014 Snowdon affair and the actions of Sir Jeremy Heywood:

Video footage was released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives – GCHQ technicians watched as journalists took angle grinders and drills to computers. Britains most senior civil servant,  Jeremy Heywood had previously explicitly warned the Guardian’s editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American’s National Security Agency and GCHQ.

At one point Heywood said: “We can do this nicely or we can go to law”. He added: “A lot of powerful people think you should be closed down.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1720 – The South Sea Bubble

This was, in its time the largest financial Ponzi Scheme ever created and it involved almost all of Englands’ Peers of the realm, politicians and their toadies who were hell-bent on gathering money to themselves at the expense of the public.

In 1720, in return for a loan of £7 million to finance the war against France, the House of Lords passed the South Sea Bill, which allowed the South Sea Company a monopoly in trade with South America.

The company underwrote the English National Debt, which stood at £30 million, on a promise of an extortionate 5% interest from the Government.

Shares immediately rose to 10 times their value, speculation ran wild and all sorts of companies, some lunatic, some fraudulent or just optimistic were launched.

one company floated was to buy the Irish Bogs, another to manufacture a gun to fire square cannonballs and the most ludicrous of all “For carrying-on an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is!!” Unbelievably £2000 was invested in this one!

The country went wild, stocks increased in all these and other ‘dodgy’ schemes, and huge fortunes were made.

Then the ‘bubble’ in London burst!

The stocks crashed and people all over the country lost all of their money.

Porters and ladies maids who had bought their own carriages became destitute almost overnight.

The Clergy, Bishops and the Gentry lost their life savings; the whole country suffered a catastrophic loss of money and property.

Suicides became a daily occurrence.

The gullible mob whose innate greed had lain behind this mass hysteria for wealth demanded vengeance.

The Postmaster General took poison and his son, who was the Secretary of State, avoided disaster by fortuitously contracting smallpox and died!

The South Sea Company Directors were arrested and their estates forfeited.

There were 462 members of the House of Commons and 112 Peers in the South Sea Company who were involved in the fraud.

Frantic bankers thronged the lobbies at Parliament and the Riot Act was read to restore order.

As a result of a Parliamentary inquiry, John Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and several members of Parliament were expelled in 1721.

King George, I also became involved as his two mistresses, the Countess of Darlington and the Duchess of Kendal, were heavily involved in the South Sea Company and were blamed by the populace as being responsible.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Walpole sorted out the terrible financial mess by splitting the National Debt, (of the defunct South Sea Company), between the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the Sinking Fund, (income put aside each year to cover exigencies).

In doing so he saved many of his fellow peers, royals, and politician speculators from bankruptcy by recovering lots of money for them.

But someone had to pay and Scots were duly hammered with the imposition of an extended period of austerity in which many new commodity taxes were imposed on those who could least afford it.

The rich remained rich at the expense of the poor!!!!.

I am minded of the 2007/2008 banking crash which was attributable to the same 1% of money grabbers.

And they were bailed out at the expense of UK taxpayers by the most incompetent group of Labour and Tory politicians ever to hold office.

And many of them are still around the city of Westminster, government, and banking when they should be in custody.

 

 

 

The Three Amigos (George’s)

 

George, I was Elector of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698, and was crowned King of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714.

His reign ended with his death in 1727.

A largely absent monarch he passed political power to Robert Walpole and the Twigs.

 

 

 

George II

German-born, George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, was crowned King of Great Britain and Ireland at the age of 43 and reigned between 1727 – 1760.

He was a short-tempered, boorish man who defied his father and associated with opposition peers, (whom his father mistrusted) and they were at loggerheads for many years.

This eventually led to him and his wife Caroline being banished from the King’s court and barred from seeing their children, who were held by the king.

A situation only resolved when they finally reconciled towards the end of his father’s life.  But he did not attend his father’s funeral.

Many thought that he would dump Walpole but the wily old ratbag persuaded parliament to increase the King’s civil list allowance by around 50% and gained the friendship of Queen Caroline who George adored.

Caroline persuaded her husband to retain Walpole who enjoyed a substantial majority in Parliament.

Britain reopened hostilities with France in 1743.

This was extended by George, to include succession rights in Austria on the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

He believed Charles’s daughter Maria Theresa should succeed in the Austrian dominions.

A 12,000 strong force was raised and sent to Europe and led by George, fought alongside Austrian, Dutch, Hanoverian and Hessian troops and defeated the French at the Battle of Dettingen on 16/27 June 1743.

George, without conferring with his British ministers, retained the British force near Hanover fearing another French incursion.

The British public was appalled that British soldiers had been deployed to fight in Europe in support of Hanoverians and the government was censured after a heated debate in parliament and was subsequently removed from office in 1746.

Like his father, George II was an absent monarch who passed political power to Robert Walpole and the Twigs.

 

Frederick

His son George III

 

Frederick (George)

In the absence of his father, away in Germany Frederick actively campaigned for the opposition in the 1741 British general election which resulted in a hung parliament.

Walpole approached him with the promise of an increased allowance and offered to pay off his debts, but Frederick refused.

This forced Walpole’s resignation and he bowed out of politics in 1742.

English born, the eldest son, Frederick, had a difficult relationship with his father.

He died unexpectedly in 1751, nine years before his father with the result that George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III (mad George) who went on the lose the American colonies.

 

 

 

General Wade

 

 

Walpole and the Whigs

The Whigs fared badly at the 1724/5 election and lost many supporters but Cock-a-hoop with their malt tax victory Walpoles new government put the boot in and forced more commodity taxes on Scotland.

An increased Scottish presence at Westminster counted for nothing since with a built-in majority guaranteeing its power England cared not a jot for Scottish opinion.

Mindful of General Wade’s attack on Glasgow and the murder of civilians just a year or so before Scots were well aware of the threat of the English military should any violence occur and took a new tack by forming into political groups.

These, in turn, merged and over the next ten years of the Whig government, the movement developed into a potent political force at Westminster.

But victories were not so significant as to cause Walpole to worry unduly.

An early version of the Scottish National Party!!!

But England was not without its problems on the political front as an increasing number of Whigs became disillusioned with Walpole’s authoritarian style of leadership and his foreign and economic policies which alienated the United Kingdom from Europe and the world.

Adopting the title, “The Patriots” a new political grouping evolved and claiming to be the protectors of the unwritten English constitution soon attracted a significant following and the support of the Scottish politicians at Westminster.

At this time also the English press was just taking off with its reach extending outside London into the provinces and the “patriots” were quick to use the new medium to inform the public of their aims and aspirations.

But achieving change was a slow process and political guerilla tactics adopted by the Patriots took time to wear down Walpole and his ultra-right-wing English centred supporters who had ruled the roost for so long years.

The election of 1734 provided an opportunity to challenge Walpole’s Whigs and the “Patriots”, in an alliance with Scottish peers did just that making maximum use of the media to get its message across to the nation.

And the message was!! That there was nothing wrong with the recently formed United Kingdom.

The way forward was to embrace and enhance a fully integrated nation-state under a Protestant monarch.

Scots peers responded positively and support for Walpole’s Whigs in Scotland began to waver.

A new newspaper, the “Thistle” published weekly, was widely circulated in the central belt, less so in the highlands who had not been persuaded to the “Patriot” cause preferring a return of the Stuart divine-right monarchy.

The political message, “there is another way” resonated well with Scots.

The problem for many was “which way”.

 

Walpole

 

The “Patriots” agenda promoted the message that a victory for the “Patriots” would bring with it a “return to a political system true to the content of the Acts of Union ensuring equal rights for all”.

The strategy failed because of the limited reach of the campaign.

The “Patriots” concentrated their efforts in the professional sectors of Glasgow and Edinburgh and failed to extend it to the rest of Scotland.

So not enough people got the message!!! But they did make inroads in the cities!!

In England Walpole’s Whigs took a beating but retained power which meant that Scotland was bang in the firing line for more harsh treatment at the hands of the Whigs.

 

 

 

 

The Porteous Crisis 1737/38

The crisis brought Scots of all political persuasions together under the “Patriot” banner to protest against Whig government abuse and disrespect of Scottish legal and political autonomy.

It began in the spring of 1736 when two habitual burglars were done for breaking and entering and robbing the Collector of Customs building in Kirkcaldy.

A crime for which they were sentenced to Hang.

While awaiting their execution one of the prisoners aided by the other escaped custody.

The exploits of the condemned men brought support from the public who considered the sentence to be unjust.

But authorities ignored their pleas and went ahead with the execution.

The public execution in the Grassmarket was attended by a large crowd who were vocal in their protests and when the deed was done a few of them started to throw stones at the hangman and his helpers.

This was not an unusual occurrence and usually passed without further incident.

But on the occasion, there was an immediate and brutal response when city guard leader, Captain John Porteous fired into the crowd and ordered his men to do the same.

When the shooting stopped there were eight dead and much more seriously wounded.

The public protested vehemently and Porteous was charged with murder, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging in the same Grassmarket where he and his men had committed the atrocities.

 

 

The unsavory incident would have been closed had the execution been carried out, but Whig peers petitioned the Queen Regent Caroline to suspend the sentence so that appeals could be gathered and presented to the courts.

She duly consented to their request and ordered the Scottish Lords of Justiciary to suspend the sentence for at least 6 weeks.

Edinburgh citizens, sorely aggrieved that they were being denied justice took matters into their own hands, dragged Porteous from the Tollbooth and hanged him in the Grassmarket.

News of the “riot” reached the Westminster government who immediately ordered General Wade and his English forces to Edinburgh to assist in the “speedy and exemplary punishment’ of the riots” “ringleaders and abetters”.

A second large body of English soldiers was moved into Edinburgh castle to patrol the area, conduct “stop and search” patrols and enforce curfews.

The Westminster Whigs also formed a view that the Edinburgh city authorities were at fault.

Opinions that were strengthened in the weeks that followed when no-one had been brought to account.

General Wade complained that: “the magistrates had conspired to allow the murder of Porteous and aided their escape from justice”.

His unfounded assertions provided the catalyst the Whig government had been waiting for and it speedily introduced a new act, the “Bill of Pains and Penalties” and used it against Edinburgh, with the charge that the City authorities had “insulted the royal prerogative”.

Edinburgh’s Lord Provost was arrested and many “Royal” privileges were removed adversely affecting traders and the city was placed in purgatory.

Edinburgh citizens were angry at the actions of the government and questioned the legality of the English moves against the city.

The question most raised was, “what right had been bestowed on Westminster that gave it the authority to punish Edinburgh for a crime involving Scottish citizens, that had taken place on Scottish soil?

Scottish politicians set their petty partisan quarrels and protests were raised at Westminster strongly condemning the Whig government for its, “contradiction to the express Articles of Union”.

But their protests fell upon deaf ears.

Edinburgh was made to pay a heavy fine to the exchequer and every church minister in Scotland was forced to read out a proclamation apologizing for the behavior of Edinburgh citizens.

 

 

The Porteous affair was one of many incidents in which the Walpole government protected the military from its excesses, imposed “Martial Law” and committed acts of public violence against the people of Scotland.

What was particularly galling was the unequal treatment of Scottish protestors when rioting in English cities had never been subject to military occupation and martial law.

The Whig victory was pyrrhic since it confirmed what many Scots knew in their hearts that Scotland was not an equal partner in a Union of countries but a colony of England.

The indignities inflicted by Walpole’s Whigs drove some Scots to seek the overturn the British and to invite the return of the Stuart’s to Scotland, but people in the Central belt and lowland parts of the country preferred to remain with the Union hoping for the removal of Walpole’s Whigs and a return to the ideals of the Acts of Union.

Wishful thinking indeed!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rise of the Whigs and Sir Robert Walpole

With German “Geordie”, preferring to remain in Germany the newly created United Kingdom was governed by proxy.

The shift of power transferred from the monarch to a council of ministers comprised of Conservatives and Whigs.

The Whigs proved to be the most dominant of the groups and very quickly grew their powerbase at Westminster then extended it to include Scotland, with the active assistance of sycophantic Scottish lords and landowners.

Sir Robert Walpole, The Lord Chancellor, (who later promoted himself as the first-ever Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) took charge of the government in England and quickly extended his powers to include Scotland by roping into the Westminster government a number of Scottish lords who sycophantically toadied to Walpole and to England.

The Scots were pacified by those they thought would defend their rights.

The political establishment continued to exercise control over policy in Scotland through the patronage of the Whigs but an appearance of freedom was “smoke and mirrors” since it was Walpole and his Westminster government that dictated political events in the United Kingdom.

The servile deference to the Whig government, of Scots who attended the Westminster parliament, brought with it the contempt of an English Westminster political elite who viewed them as being open to corrupt influence and especially bribery.

By 1725, the Whigs hold over Scotland and Scottish politics was absolute. The Scottish Secretary, (The Earl of Newcastle) was so confident of his governments’ power he publically stated Scotland to be a nation with, “the reputation of so much complaisance for the powers in being”.

But the complaisance of the Scots was sorely tried in the period 1720-1730 by a Walpole government that destroyed Scottish goodwill through the imposition of a series of financial and legal policies favouring privileged English landholders over Scottish consumers.

 

 

 

 

Walpole transfers taxation From Landowners to the masses

The Whig agenda under the leadership of Walpole, Lord Chamberlin, was a redistribution of the United Kingdoms tax burden.

The first part of this revenue restructuring programme involved replacing land taxes (helping the rich get richer) with commodities taxes (making the poor even poorer).

The shift to commodities taxes was purely political.

Walpole greatly reduced taxes burden on landholders gaining their allegiance to his Whig Party.

He then followed this up by moving the tax burden away from England to Scotland and in time to other parts of the emerging British Empire.

Walpole’s supporters argued that the treaty of the union “supposed and required equality of taxes between England and Scotland” and it would be unconstitutional for Scots, despite their comparative poverty to pay a penny less than their wealthy southern neighbours.

The cynical approach would bring with its introduction a significant increase in the tax burden of the Scots balance with a massive decrease of taxation on the rich.

The malt tax of 1724–5 was the first of many taxes introduced by the Whigs that created the most regressive form of taxation in the world. An insidious form of repression that has never been reversed.

 

 

 

The Malt Tax Crisis, 1724–5

The English government first attempted to introduce a levy on Scottish malt in 1713, but this failed. But Scots anticipated that Westminster would seek to impose its will at some future date. And it did.

In December 1724 Walpole introduced a proposal to impose a 6d. excise in Scotland on every barrel of ale, (Subsequently reduced to 3d after intense lobbying).

The Scottish response was fast and furious. Scots took to the streets in protest and freeholders in all of the Scottish cities refused to collect the tax, preferring to close their establishments. Petitions were sent to the Westminster government fully supported by all Scottish politicians including those of a Whig persuasion.

Scottish concern about the malt tax was equally about principle and poverty. They believed that Scotland’s poverty made it unable to bear the same share of public burdens as its rich neighbour to the south and if they backed off from the issue the Whig government would introduce more punitive taxes in the future. Enough was enough!! But the legislation was introduced in the face of all of Scotlands opposition

Riots protesting the malt tax swept across Scotland’s cities over the summer of 1725.

There were consequences. In June 1725, about 100 people gathered in Glasgow and marched on the City’s townhouse and destroyed it. The morning after a company of English soldiers was deployed to the city to take control of a number of buildings important to the revenue office. The crowd beat them back and they retreated to barracks.

In July 1725, the brewers of Edinburgh joined together and agreed to stop brewing beer until the malt tax was lifted. Whig politicians worried that it would drive an already unhappy city into outright rebellion and arrested four or five leading Edinburgh brewers, a tactic which scared forty of their fellow brewers into breaking the strike within the week.

In August a the Whig MP for Dundee, Logie was attacked and might have killed but for his rescue by English soldiers.

The Westminster government responded by deploying a large English military force under General Wade, to “march into the City of Glasgow and strike terror into the mutineers in the west”. This he did with great gusto, by first attacking, then firing upon protestors killing several people following this up with the imposition of “Martial Law” and strict curfews and movement of the civilian population.

The Whigs then exacted retribution against the City of Glasgow by arresting a number of City Magistrates and trying them for the crime of “malversation”.

The humiliating public trial of Glasgow’s elected officials was both a warning of the costs of challenging Whig power and a reminder to a colony unwilling to accept its subservience to the whims of the Westminster government.

By arresting elected city officials on trumped-up charges and putting a major Scottish city under military occupation, the Whig ministry displayed a criminal lack of regard for Scotland’s sense of political autonomy and proved yet again that they viewed Scotland as a subordinate colony whose sovereignty and institutions meant nothing to them.

 

 

 

 

Summary

Commodities taxes like the malt tax disproportionately affected poorer Scots, raising the price of malted barley, which was used not only to make ale but also bread. And beer production which was an important industry in economically downtrodden Scotland.

The malt tax crisis of 1724–5, was an attack on the survival of many Scots and it exposed the Whigs’ financial agenda and disregard for Scottish autonomy and convinced many Whig supporting Scottish politicians that the party did not have Scotlands best interests at heart.

Their protests resulted in them losing the patronage of Walpole and his Westminster government and they were forced to resign from office. Many Scottish Whig ministers elected to support the actions of their government against Scotland and retained their positions of authority.

But the Westminster government “shot itself in the foot” with the imposition of the malt tax since in doing so it alienated Scotland’s Lowland cities that had been had thought to be bastions of Hanoverian Whig support. The loyalties of many Glasgow inhabitants shifted away from the Whigs.

At Westminster, efforts by Scottish representatives to repeal the tax proved futile, though the Whig ministry, in an effort to appease their Whig allies, agreed to apply any tax revenue over £20,000 to a new Board of Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures, which came into operation in 1727.

The provision, though better than nothing, was hardly a capitulation since England had already promised—and failed—to provide these funds several decades earlier upon passage of the act of union.

The malt tax crisis drew to a close with the Whig ministry completely victorious, though that victory would come with certain political costs. Although these events never turned into an insurrection the incident had a significant impact on the course of Anglo-Scottish party politics.