Wednesday Night* is Champions League Night (for some)!

* - not available in Scotland.

On Wednesday night, I'm going to sit on my sofa and watch Scotland's soccer champions, Celtic, take on the best team in the world, the Catalan icons of Barcelona in the Champions League. I'll pad to the kettle in my slippers to get another cup of tea as the greatest-ever player, Lionel Messi, struts his stuff. I'll dash to the freezer to grab an ice pole as Giorgios Samaras leaves the Argentine watching in open-mouthed jealousy at his panache, his skill, and his lustrous hair and beard.

And because the match is live on RTÉ Two, I won't have to either pay heaps of money (the cheapest Sky Sports subscription here is €46,50/month, or €558 per year - plus I'd have to get Éircom to install a phone line, so there's a line rental charge too of €20,96/month, bringing my grand total €809,52 per annum to watch Celtic's Champions League games) to Rupert Murdoch, or nip out to the pub (I'd probably be as cheap actually going to the match, Heaven forbid!).

If you're in Scotland, however, the nation which enters Celtic into the Champions League (Celtic is the only Scottish club in existence which has ever qualified for the Champions League: Motherwell and Hearts have both lost in qualifiers) you can't do that, because STV isn't allowed to broadcast the match.

Because the UEFA only sells its Champions League packages in terms of geographical states, STV cannot opt out and show another game from ITV, despite being independently (or separately, if you're the despicable liar Margaret Curran) owned, serving an entirely different nation, serving an entirely different soccer structure, not broadcasting outside Scotland (or in much of it), and the Scottish club's game clearly being of more interest to its audience. 

ITV has the right to broadcast a match on Tuesday (and as long as there are English teams in the competition, they'll naturally, and quite appropriately, show them ahead of a Scottish team), and not a Wednesday. That's Sky's night. 

But here, TV3 has tonight's game between Manchester and Ajax, while RTÉ will broadcast the Celtic game tomorrow. Why can't STV do the same?

Because Uefa only sell packages to states, STV wouldn't be competing against Scottish broadcasters to show games within Scotland, they have to compete against UK broadcasters - with far more revenue. 

It's completely unfair, and they haven't a chance of succeeding.

You're either paying money to Rupert and the lads, or you're down to the pub. If you can't afford Sky, or you can't afford to go to the pub, well, piss off, peasant, the Champions League isn't for you. This is Britain, you know. We can't have some sort of something for nothing society, can we, Johann?

Now, STV serves 3.849.000 people. RTÉ serves slightly fewer than 4.588.000 people. These two broadcaster, which serve very similar cultures and audiences, are entirely different from ITV1, which serves many millions of people in England, Wales and the Borders. 

ITV1 will never show a Scottish team live ahead of an English team. Why would they? They're an English broadcaster. They cater to their audience. 

But it's only with independence that STV can cater to their audience. 

Scotland - like England, like Germany, like the Netherlands, like Greece and Turkey, like Denmark and Italy - deserves to see its Champion club represent our country on our own television screens. Maybe not every game live in glorious technicolour, but to have a complete ban on our country's Champions League games is an atrocious reminder of the inequalities of the Union. 

A puppy, yesterday. It has nothing to do with this post, I just thought it was nice

It's these little inequalities which seem into the minds of the man on the street - the breadline pensioner who won't be able to see his team playing the world's greatest; the children who won't be inspired by seeing Scotland's champions taking on Barcelona because they can't go to the pub, can they? - which will make people think "hold on, how can we be Better Together when we get nothing from it?".

They'll ask themselves why, almost unique amongst the nations of Europe, they can almost never watch their national team play (the BBC seemed to find a great deal of money, however, to show England matches for a generation or more; every Ireland match is live on RTÉ, every Germany match on ARD or ZDF). 

They'll perhaps ask themselves why their national broadcaster, the BBC, almost entirely ignored the Scottish governing party's conference, but gave hours to American politics. 

Maybe they'll even ask themselves why Scotland is forbidden to take part in the Eurovision song contest, when STV is a part of the European Broadcasting Union.

This evening, two major political events occurred. The Americans finished the last day of campaigning before this bloody interminable election happens; and there was a major debate - indeed, a Big Debate - involving master debater Willie Rennie, on the constitutional future of Scotland. One of those was available online. 

It wasn't Scotland that Scotland's state broadcaster was interested in.

Not being able to watch Celtic take on Barcelona won't in itself swing any votes - but it's another little thing, another little story, another nagging doubt in the mind of the undecided voter.

Broadcasting is one of the many little nagging issues in which Scotsmen and Scotswomen know instinctively they are unfairly treated by dint of being part of this unequal, intolerable Union, which is no longer fit for purpose

The Five Stages of Unionism

1. Denial There will never be a referendum on Independence. Not now, not ever.

2. Anger The Government doesn't even have the right to hold a referendum!

3. Bargaining We'll let you have a referendum on the following terms...

4. Depression This referendum will lead to uncertainty and companies pulling out

5. Acceptance. The Government and the British have reached a deal to hold a referendum

Lamont's Scotland

It's November 2016. With the independence referendum lost, Scotland languishes under a Conservative government with no Scottish MPs. 

Johann Lamont's Labour Party has won the Scottish Parliament election the previous year, and is bound by a manifesto described by the Daily Mail as "common sense". 

A retired nurse, an octogenarian widow, leaves her Glasgow home in the depths of winter. Stripped of her free bus pass, she either has to trudge for five miles through the snow, or pay Labour's privatised buses a fiver for a return ticket to the doctor's. She's worked all her life, but on her pitiful pension, she can't afford the bus fare. But why should we give her a free bus pass? This is Scotland! This is the land we don't give something for nothing. 

Her local surgery has closed as a result of the reduction in the Scottish block grant. There's nothing Scotland can do. What are we going to do - vote out a government which has no MPs here anyway?

The doctor writes a prescription for the medicine she needs to stay healthy. There's no point in it - since Labour abolished free prescriptions for the sick, she can't afford to buy it. But we can't simply give the sick something for nothing. 

She knows that she's against a wall. She can't afford her medicine, so her illness will get worse. If her illness will get worse, she'll require care. But Labour have abolished free personal care for the elderly. They can't get something for nothing.

She gets home to an ice-cold house. With Labour not having built a single new council house in Glasgow since 1979, the wind whips through her home. She has to choose between heating her home or paying for Labour's Council Tax, which has risen far above her pension. But tax is tax. We can't freeze it. We can't give something for nothing. If the old lady has to freeze, so be it. But we must raise the Council Tax. 

She rings her grandson, a bright young boy, the hope for her future. She'd always wanted him to go to university and make the best of himself. He's just got five Highers, all at A grade. But he won't be going to university. Labour have abolished free higher education, and the brightest working-class kids are now unable to go to university. We can't, after all, give something for nothing.

With a Conservative government in London, there is no investment in jobs. The unemployment lines across Britain have reached five million. This boy's only choice was university or the dole queue. 

With Labour's abolition of the one thousand extra police officers introduced in the last Parliament, law and order begins to break down in the streets. With no prospects of using his brain, and no hope of a job, what other option is there but a life of crime?

This is the vision Johann Lamont outlined for Scotland yesterday. 

This is why you must vote Yes.

Lamont's Hate Speech Shows No anti-Independence Party is Left

This afternoon Johann Lamont, who claims to be the leader of Labour in Scotland, gave what the party described as a "keynote speech" in Edinburgh. More than a year after their destruction in the Scottish general election, in which they lost almost every constituency in Scotland, the "leader" crawled from under the sofa to finally outline her vision of the party. 

And what a vision it was. 

Lamont - who claims to be the leader of Labour in Scotland but refuses to say how many votes she gained in the leadership election - gave a speech notable for a public outpouring of outright hatred and contempt for the working class.

Lamont showed her contempt for the working class

As she hauled Labour to the extreme right of Scottish politics, she announced that she wished to abolish:

• Free medical prescriptions for the poor
• Free personal care for the elderly
• Free university tuition for the working class
• Free bus travel for our pensioners

and hugely increase Council Tax, massively weightening the financial burden on families already struggling to make ends meet thanks the utter destruction of the Scottish economy by Labour. 

She also said that "1000 additional bobbies on the beat is not the best use of police resources". There is a reason that crime in Scotland is at an historic low. That reason is that police numbers in our country is at an historic high. 

Johann Lamont wants to put the lives of Scottish people at risk so that there is no difference between police numbers in Scotland and Britain. She is literally prepared for Scottish people to die to save the union.

Lamont's speech captured in Cloud format

Lamont, who was the beneficiary of a free university education, and has so far refused to refund any of the tuition fees or grant money despite demanding all working-class students now pay, demanded that we end the "something for nothing culture". One can imagine Lamont, in her previous life as a teacher, screaming abuse into the faces of those of her charges who received free school meals. 

It is the hate-filled language of Thatcherite Conservatism that is so damning. Lamont is so used to haranguing, attacking and talking down Scotland at every opportunity that she forgets she needs its people to vote for her. But I know that Lamont isn't - or wasn't, at least - a Thatcherite. So why the shift? It's simple. A socially democratic Scotland and a hard-right England is an advert for independence. Lamont prizes the union above all. Therefore, if Scotland must suffer to maintain the impression of equality, suffer she will.

Fanatical Unionist Lamont with a prescient headline

Her party has never been at a lower ebb - wiped out north of Dumbarton, she personally is a most unpopular leader, almost losing her Pollok seat last year. 

As Green Party leader, Pat Harvie, said: "if policy reform means ending the free education Johann Lamont's generation enjoyed, or charging patients for NHS services, or continuing to court the support of big business...Labour are free to continue their decline".

Lamont's "something for nothing culture" isn't her party's decision to shovel thousands of millions of pounds at fraudulent and criminal bankers. Oh no, she's not said a word about that. 

She's not said a word about spending hundreds of millions of pounds on Weapons of Mass Destruction, to be based a few kilometers from the deprived constituency in which she point-blank refuses to live. 

Nope, her idea of leeching from the state is to ban working-class kids from going to university. It's telling the Drumchapel pensioners who worked their whole lives that they have to choose between eating and going to Helensburgh for the day. It's ripping the rings from the fingers of the retired nurse in Nitshill to pay for her healthcare, before her house is also stolen from her. 

Her idea of "fairness" is to force a newly-married, minimum wage couple in Hillington with no assets but the small house they inherited to pay the exact same Council Tax as the dentist living next door. 

These things are basic rights of the Scottish people. They were not given by the Labour Party. They were taken by the people. 

As Lamont stood on the podium and spat on the grave of Keir Hardy, as she casually smeared the people of Scotland as subsidy junkies, as she called her party's dwindling support base leeches and thieves, she said: "the idea that Scotland is a land where everything is free is a lie". 

Nobody has that idea, Johann. Nobody believes that to be the case. 

The fact is that our free prescriptions aren't free. None of the other basic rights which Lamont wishes to abolish are free. 

Free at the point of use? Certainly. But not free. We, all of us, pay for these things. We pay for it through the massive surplus we send to the Treasury in London each year, getting a portion of it back. 

Lamont is George Osborne in a frock.

We could pay for more like it if we didn't have to fund the obscenity of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lamont won't tell us her views on Trident (the Scottish people don't have the intelligence to cope with it), but her party's view is that we should continue to spend billions of pounds on it or its successor. 

Lamont's party told us - maliciously and falsely - that Saddam Hussein desired a fraction of the Weapons of Mass Destruction the aggressive United Kingdom held. In revenge, Labour slaughtered a million Iraqi men, women and children. 

If you can stay in a party which does that, then I suppose the complete abdication of any socialist principles wouldn't be too much of a jump. 

What this does show, though, is that the facade of respectability has been thrown off by Labour. They are now proudly and openly a right-wing party. We knew that already: their links with the bankers and media moguls, their open courting of the fascists in the Orange Order, their desire to tax people with not an iota of consideration given to their ability to pay, the systematic extermination of human beings because of where they lived, the fact that under Labour, the list of criminal offences increased more than tenfold. 

It would be totally wrong, of course, to suggest that the outpouring of revulsion at Lamont's comments was unanimous. She had some support:

There is a proverb, Mrs Joyner...

The anti-Scotland campaign consists of the two British government coalition parties, the Conservatives and Liberals; the three fascist organisations, the Scottish Defence League and Orange Order; the fascist British National Party, and the Labour Party. 

Even before Lamont's hate-filled rant against the people of Scotland today, the above looked to be rather unbalancedly right-wing. What we can say now, with certainty, is that the anti-Scotland campaign stands for right-wing principles. 

It stands for regression, it stands for austerity, it stands for hammering the working class. 

And the Yes campaign?

The National Party, Socialist Party, Solidarity, Green Party and a whole host of progressive social-democratic and socialist organisations. 

Scotland is a country which prides itself on social democracy, fairness and justice. 

You have one vote which means two things. 

Fundamentally, the constitutional aspect of the referendum is irrelevant. The choice is between the Tories, Liberals, SDL, BNP, Orange Order, Labour, austerity and bitterness; or between the SNP, SSP, Greens, progressivity, fairness, decency, honesty and integrity. 

Weekend events show difference between pro- and anti-Scotland campaigns

On Saturday, men, women and children from every city in Scotland poured into our capital city in their thousands to show their support for Scotland becoming a democracy. It was one of the largest political demonstrations in Scottish history. 

The march attracted members of almost every serious political party in Scotland, and people who are members of no party. Speakers from the National Party, the Socialist Party, from the Labour Party, the Green Party, non-party lawyers, and the doyenne of pro-democracy politics, Margo MacDonald, spoke passionately about the future of Scotland to an enthusiastic crowd of over 10.000. 

The YES campaign has shown itself to be an incredibly broad church. The support of many of our fellow Europeans on the march (demonstrators came from Padania, Catalunya, Wales, Ireland, Bavaria and Flanders, amongst others) shows the affection in which Scotland is held in our European Union. 

There was only one slight sour note to the day. The presence, and eventual arrest, of several Better Together supporters, who attacked some marchers and attempted to incite disorder, spoke volumes of the type of campaign which will be run by the anti-Scotland side. 

It is clear that the Better Together campaign is well aware that they cannot win a fair referendum based on an analysis of the debate. More than three centuries into the union between Scotland and England, the unionists have still not managed to elucidate a single positive argument for creating or maintaining the union. 

The Better Together campaigners, a motley crew of Labour, BNP, Conservative, the fascist Orange Order, and Scottish Defence League members know this. 

They know, that if they were to organise a pro-union march, they would be humiliated. With no way to outdo the pro-Scotland demonstration, the next best option is to disrupt it. 

This is why the Better Together campaigners were sent out to Edinburgh to cause trouble. An outbreak of violence would have been a dream come true for the Better Together organisers. Fortunately, the pro-Scotland marchers behaved with honour and dignity, an allowed the police to do their job. We must be on our guard always, for this is a tactic they will use every time we rally.

Aware that sending their SDL and Orange thugs out to attack families and incite violence on a sunny day in Edinburgh will not in itself persuade people to vote in favour of the union, the Better Together organisers have already decided that it they can only win the referendum by acting outside the law. 

On Sunday, the Herald revealed that the Better Together organisation had been gathering intelligence on voters without their consent - a criminal offence. 

Not a technical offence, not an overlooking of the rules, but a criminal offence.

The Better Together campaign have already indicated that they intend to continue using this illegally-gathered information stolen from innocent voters. 

It is possible to overlook a criminal offence in the first instance. However, when the perpetrator of a crime asserts openly that they will continue to completely ignore the criminal code, and benefit from the widespread theft of data, then there is only one option. 

The Better Together campaign must be ordered to destroy all data received by it before it properly registered with the Data Commissioner. And if it does not do so, then its directors must be prosecuted from their crime. 

The Better Together campaign has started with violence and criminality. 

Is this the positive case for the union?

Anti-Independence Campaign Tell Outright Lie in Leaflet

This weekend saw the anti-Scottish Squadron Volante of British Nationalist Parties and the Orange Order getting together with literature to instil fear of normality into the Scottish people. 

Jim Murphy went out to campaign with SCUP MSP Jackson Carlaw (Labour believe Carlaw is  unfit to hold elected office but are happy to campaign with him to preserved the unequal, unfair and aggressive United Kingdom.) It's quite probable that apart from their obsession with holding Scotland back from joining the nations of the world, they had much to talk about: Carlaw was appointed Deputy Leader of SCUP after telling racist jokes at its  manifesto launch in 2005 - perhaps they was able to swap stories about the "good old days" of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, which SCUP so loudly and proudly supported, and from which Murphy benefited so gratefully. 

In other areas of Scotland, woman abuser Ian Davidson went out with the party's "leader" Johann Lamont in Govan to obstruct people's shopping Saturdays with a smattering of bitter Unionists. Quite how Lamont can bear to be gallivanting with such a violently misogynistic ned is beyond me. Perhaps she puts her principles in the same box as she keeps her views on Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

They handed out the following leaflet:

Anti-Independence leaflet, courtesy Nic Prigg

The leaflet, as a whole is laughable. It contains the whole anti-Scotland argument in one document; the argument being "you are too small, too poor and too stupid to possibly be able to operate your own democracy". 

If these ten points are the reasons to remain part of the most aggressive and destructive empire in the history of mankind, then it cannot be credible that the people of Scotland will choose this option. 

1. Scots are represented by over 270 embassies as part of the UK.

This is not one of the typical and cynical distortions of the truth by the British Nationalist Parties which we know and love - it is a simple, blatant, outright and easily provable lie. 

The British Government's very own foreign ministry shows the lie. It tells us that the United Kingdom has embassies in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Chile, PR China, Colombia, DR Congo, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, DPR Korea, South Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, FYR Macedonia, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, The Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, The Ukraine, UAE, USA, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen and Zimbabwe. 

Phew!

It's an impressive list, to be sure.

But it's not "more than 270 embassies".

It is, in fact, little more than one hundred - of which  more than one third (in italics) are in this very continent of Europe.

It's hardly a worldwide system of influence and presence, is it? Indeed, during the secession negotiations, Scotland will be owed money for many of the properties in which these embassies are based. Is it beyond comprehension that the Government of Scotland may strike a deal with the British regime that sees the UK representing Scottish consular affairs in place of this money? 

Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, fails to be represented diplomatically in almost half of all sovereign states in the world. Is it beyond comprehension that in these places in  which we need to be represented, we can either open an embassy, or strike a deal with one of our European partners to do so. This isn't just an option for tinpot dictatorships: even the United States makes use of this arrangement on occasion. 

2. Scotland exports twice as much to England, Wales and Northern Ireland as to the rest of the world. 

Between 2006 and 2010, Scottish exports to the rest of the world increased by 18,7%.

For a small nation like Scotland, it is only natural that our major export market is our closest neighbour: the British are also our major import partner. 

This is not only a nonsensical reason for remaining part of the United Kingdom (Britain's second largest export market is the Russian Federation: should they join in a political union? Surely they'd be richer, stronger together, and with a much better chance of winning medals in the Olympics?), but it has more than a slightly veiled threat of trade barriers and embargoes if we dare to take our independence back. 

If there are to be no trade embargoes, then why would a change in the seat of government affect our export markets?

If there are to be trade embargoes, is bullying and threats really a reason to stay in the Union? 

3. One in five Scots are employed by English, Welsh and Northern Irish firms.

How awfully nice. Not quite sure why it is an issue in an independence referendum, however (notwithstanding even the fact that this means 80% of Scots are not employed by British firms). 

Is this an implication that these firms will flee for the hills the minute Scotland takes control of its defence and foreign affairs? If so, why are there so many British firms operating contentedly in Ireland?

There hasn't been a single British company which has spoken of leaving Scotland after independence. Quite the contrary: with our dedicated and highly-skilled workforce, we are an attractive location for companies. 

Of those which have spoken, GlaxoSmithKline, the major pharmaceutical company, has said it will be "business as usual" following Restoration of Sovereignty, with its CEO, Andrew Witty, commenting that 

“Obviously the very big investment we’re making in Montrose and Irvine signals our confidence in the future of Scotland. What we’ve done speaks louder than words.”

Since the independence-supporting SNP took control more than five years ago, outside companies have invested in Scotland, including Diageo (which only this week said that it would be business as usual for them after independence), GSK, Taqa, Avaloq, Ineos, PetroChina, Dell, Gamesa, Amazon, Mitsubishi, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsui and Life Technologies, with Scotland becoming the market leader in inward investment in the United Kingdom since the SNP won its second term and announced the Independence referendum. 

4. 31,000 workers in Scotland have jobs with the UK Government

This figure represents fewer than one percent of the Scottish workforce.

This includes people working for the Department of Work and Pensions. Is it inconceivable that the functions of the DWP will not be duplicated by the new Scottish Government? Put it this way: if welfare was devolved, would it not be the case that all of these people would transfer automatically to the Scottish Government?

When the British government leaves Scotland, will all of its functions leave? 

Do the British Nationalist Parties genuinely believe that none of the functions which are held in Scotland at the moment will be required post-independence? Do they genuinely believe that there would be a welfare staff of zero? Do they genuinely believe that there would be no Inland Revenue? Do they genuinely believe Scotland will have no Customs staff? Do they genuinely believe that we will not have a passport office (we'd better have a passport office if we're going to need a passport to visit the granny in Newcastle that every bitter Unionist seems to have)? Do they genuinely believe we'll have no Coast Guard?

Stop the scaremongering: people just don't believe your lies any more. 

5. Scottish banks were bailed out with £470 bn from UK taxpayers

The collapse of the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland were a direct result of the refusal of the British government to properly regulate the banks. 

The "too poor, too stupid" leaflet from the British Nationalist Parties implies that only Scottish banks collapsed. When Labour speak of the collapse of the many British banks, they are quick to refer to the "crisis which originated in America". But when Janus speaks to the Scottish side, it was a Scottish collapse, in which we were saved by the largesse of our generous, paternal neighbours, who forgave our flirt with independence to pat us on the head.

In fact, the average Scot didn't want (or need) these banks bailed out, as so many UK banks were. We would rather that, like Iceland's banks, they were punished for their crimes. 

The fact is that this was an act not of generosity from the UK taxpayers (Scottish parasites, subsidy junkies et cetera ad inifinitum), but one which - funded partly by Scotland's generation-long subsidy of the British exchequer and the money stolen from our country to pay for London's sporting vanity project this summer - was intended to maintain, for political reasons, the facade that the British economy was strong. 

And ask this: if we are indeed Better Together, why should our banks collapse anyway?

6. 800,000 Scots live and work in England and Wales without the need for papers and passports

As is natural and healthy with a neighbouring nation to which our economy is so strongly linked. 

This will continue after independence - unless the inclusion of this passage is a threat to revive the Alien Act of 1705. 

As neighbouring, fellow EU nations, British people have the right to live and work unmolested in Scotland, and vice-versa. No amount of hate and bitterness by the British Nationalist Parties, acting in concert with the fascist Orange Order, can prevent this. 

7. The UK has the world's second biggest aid budget

In 2011, the UK donated € 9,881m despite employing less than 500 staff in Scotland 

Last year, the USA donated US$ 49 bn, and Germany donated € 10,453m.

Either a Euro is worth more than five US dollars, or this is a lie. 

8. The UK means Scots get a seat at the top table of the UN

Really? Mark Grant is currently occupying the seat. He isn't Scottish, is he? His predecessors, Robert Sawers,Emyr Jones Parry, Jeremy Greenstock, John Weston, David Hannay, and Crispin Tickell, Anthony Parsons, Ivor Richard, Colin Crowe, Hugh Foot, Patrick Dean, Pierson Dixon, Gladwyn Jebb and Alexander Cadogan aren't/weren't. Scottish. 

John Thomson was Scottish, to be sure. The last Scotsman to "get a seat" at the UN Security Council. Someone who was born the day he vacated that seat would have been able to vote in the 2005 General Election. 

The only other Scotsman to "get a seat" at the UN Security Council was Donald Maitland, who was Permanent Representative for a few months in the 1970s. 

So, the very last time a Scotsman sat at the top table was 1987. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to write "the UK meant Scots briefly got a seat at the top table at the UN in the past". But maybe that would hit too close to home: a Union which may have worked in the past but which Scotland has outgrown since the days of Thatcher doesn't really fit the narrative of the British Nationalist Parties. 

9. Scots save billions on the cost of mortgages due to the UK's AAA credit rating

It is implied that a restored Scotland will not have an AAA credit rating. Quite why this should be the case when Denmark, Norway and Finland - like us, stable, northern European countries with a population around the five million mark - with their almost identical economies retain an AAA rating is not explained. 

Apparently, we would be too poor and too stupid to manage to set up our own welfare system. Who can forget the chaos when Montenegro left Serbia-Montenegro with absolutely no idea of how to.....oh, wait, that didn't happen. 

10. The pensions of 1m Scots are guaranteed by the UK welfare system

Again, the UK welfare system is not some benevolent act of charity. Scots have put into the welfare system and are entitled to those pensions. 

There are 27 sovereign member states of the European Union. The United Kingdom does not administer 26 of them. They seem to cope alright. 

Yes, the pensions are guaranteed by the UK welfare system. That is because the British regime refuses to devolve welfare to Scotland. 

Their refusal to offer it means we must take it. And in a democratic Scottish socialist republic, we can be sure that - unlike the British system - our pensioners will never, ever again have to choose between dying of hypothermia or dying of starvation. 

Farcical Olympic Games: Culmination of Long-Running British Security Obsession

When I arrived home from the ancient City of Stirling this evening, I started a bath running and switched the television on. It defaulted to one of the BBC's eight new channels dedicated to the London Olympic Games (in contrast, the BBC provides only 25 minutes of Scottish programming on BBC One Scotland, 20 minutes of Scottish programming on BBC Two Scotland, and a scant six hours of BBC Alba. The BBC provides only two radio stations in Scotland), on which a football match between America and France was being played in front of an almost entirely empty and eerily silent National Stadium in Glasgow. 


It is the latest sign that the people of Scotland have utterly rejected the London Olympic Games in their millions. It's not surprising: the organisers of the London Olympic Games have "reallocated" millions of pounds of National Lottery funding from Scottish communities to millionaire athletes and security agencies. 


The build-up to the Games has been farcical in the extreme. The imposition of segregated road lanes for such contributors to world peace and prosperity as Chang Un of the DPRK and Prince Nawaf of Saudi Arabia, and for thieves and spivs like Switzerland's J Sepp Blatter (sadly, Brazil's Dr Joao Havelange has now resigned to avoid expulsion and prison and will not be picking pockets throughout London), has made it abundantly clear to the people of this country that these games are not for us - they are for the enjoyment of the oligarchs. 


A major financial backer of the Games is Union Carbide, which perpetrated the world's worst-ever industrial disaster, slaughtering through its criminal negligence more than 3.700  of India's poorest people, and injuring over half a million more. "So maye much be spyed also, by the company and pastyme that a body vseth. For a man is for the moost parte condicioned euen lyke vnto them that he kepeth company wythe all", as Bullinger so correctly noted


The British regime hired G4S, the security company which killed refugee Jimmy Mubenga four months earlier, to provide security for the Games. I need not go into any great detail about the utter failure of this company to secure the event adequately. 


The failure of G4S to fulfil its contract, however, led to an unexpected boon for the British regime. 


18,000 British soldiers - if the BBC report this week is accurate, 2.500 of whom can be expected to commit acts of violent thuggery over and above their systematic rape and destruction of much of the Middle East  - have now been set upon the streets of London. 


This is more than the armies of Costa Rica, Mauritius, Monaco, Iceland, Haiti, Vanuatu, Palestine, Panama, St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Seychelles, Barbados, Gambia, Bahamas, Luxembourg, Belize, Guyana, Cape Verde, Equitorial Guinea, East Timor, Suriname, Malta, Lesotho, Central Africa, Liberia, Kosovo and Jamaica combined. 


It is worrying that visitors to the United Kingdom, should they make it through the hours of queues at "UK Border Force" control points, will see a country totally swamped with soldiers armed to the teeth, in scenes reminiscent of some class of Third World banana republic.


This has been a long-term policy of successive British regimes, however - to increase as much as possible the militarisation of the country. 


First, by attempting to normalise the military - having them wandering down the streets dressed in their uniforms, having them delivering the FA of England Cup to be presented to whichever racist scumbag wins it in a particular year (congratulations, John Terry), or having them sit like startled chickens on the corners of flags at Six Nations matches. 


Secondly, by changing the image of the military from the (generally accurate) perception of a gang of neds with two O-Levels between them who come back from a couple of months shooting "ragheads" to bottle people in bars and knock the bird around a bit, to the new "Wur Heeeeeeroz" shtick, eagerly lapped up by The Sun and other outlets for the hard of thinking. This has even penetrated to television stations which now apparently host some sort of Military "Oscars". 


God, you can just imagine it, can't you? "And the award for 'Best Cold-Blooded Murder of An 18-Year-Old-Kid Who You Shot In The Back' goes to............Mark Wright and James Fisher!".


Thirdly, if you cannot get the military into the country quickly enough, just turn the country into the military. Ten years ago, the vast majority of us had never seen an armed policeman in our life. Maybe if one happened across a hostage situation, or perhaps the odd one at an airport. Now, though, the police force has been transformed into a paramilitary force, armed to the teeth, and which is visibly armed and patrolling almost all public spaces with machine guns. 


Since 1990, 1.433 people have been killed by the police in England and Wales (roughly eight times more than have been killed by "terrorists"). In that time, not a single police officer has been convicted of manslaughter.


The regime has been cunning, and they have done it well, but Friday represents the apogee of their militarisation of Britain: the moment where finally, they have managed to have patrolling the streets of the United Kingdom an armed militia, ready and willing to protect the regime from the people. 


If Russia is "Upper Volta with missiles", then Britain is North Korea with a friendly face.