gdp's Comments

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Garvan Walshe: We can be sure that those who have been vaccinated won’t die of Covid. So the case

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 17:33:36 +0000

Your posts are always spot on here. Thank you.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Henry Hill: There's something rotten in the state of Scotland. But can anyone do anything about it?

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 17:09:21 +0000

Don't rely on exposing weaknesses in the SNP. The current state of politics means that people are really living to a certain extent in parallel universes with different facts. There is more mileage in repeating to anyone who will listen and at every opportunity that the main impediment to Scottish independence is the half of Scotland that remains resolutely British. As an ex independence supporter I can acknowledge this now. International commenters are often nonplussed by us Scots holding up polls of 50 odd % as triumphant vindication of the need to embark on the break up of a 300 year old union. Perhaps we ought also to be having more conversations about the role of democracy in constitutional matters. If we say we are progressive in seeking to resolve disagreements via democracy are we not hypocrites if we at the same time stifle democracy's ability to actually bring about a resolution? Democracy can't bring about a resolution if nothing is ever definitive for a generation at least. How often do you keep asking people a question before you stop, and who decides at which point you stop? If saying No once is not definitive, then why should saying Yes be any more so? Democracy without sincerity and without any real covenant is a weapon here, leading to greater and greater dysfunction. French academcic Nathalie Duclos sums up our peculiar set up with more clarity than any British commentator I've read. This is a good, fairly short piece and gives some comparison with Catalonia and Quebec. https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/384

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Tom Bell: Councils can rapidly accelerate clean transport by championing autonomous vehicles

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 13:50:24 +0000

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : WATCH: WHO won't rule out lab-escape origin for Covid-19

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 16:33:52 +0000

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Why would any sensible person even think about booking a holiday in countries with low im

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:35:49 +0000

+1000

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Stephen Booth: The main benefits of joining this Pacific trade partnership would be strategic

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 09:36:39 +0000

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Andrew Gimson's PMQs sketch: This unbrushed, unkempt Prime Minister reckons he can beat the Nats

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 16:01:55 +0000

I wasn't a fairweather independence supporter before I left it all behind in 2015. Auld claes and porridge if need be. Any group of people that are determined enough can make something of themselves in terms of a functioning state as long as they can work together. But most Scots were not, and are not like me and my traditional independence supporting family, and I've had to come to terms with that. We are a highly divided country. Half of us Scots have a genuine emotional attachment to Britain as a state. That is not nothing. The tears we witnessed in some No supporting Scots in 2014 prior to the referendum were not about economics but about the loss of something more. Even I could recognize that as a Yes supporter. Unionists that voted to remain in the EU, accept we have left it. Membership of the UK is their priority regardless of the EU or whether the government is on the left or right. In contrast many of the people in the Yes side are highly, highly conditional in their support for independence. Scotland outside the EU? Forget it. Scotland where you are poorer for a few years or even a decade? Forget it. Scotland that might be economically on the right? Forget it. This is a disaster for independence because the SNP leadership is telling people none of this will apply when all of it will apply. The EU is a technocracy that cannot make exceptions for Scotland in terms of accession. If it does it will risk its own internal stability vis a vis outcry from member states that have suffered to accede via austerity and those who have suffered it as member states. Ireland, Greece, Portugal etc will be watching carefully. Scotland will not be able to accede any time soon and the conditions for showing economic competence under an independent currency will be austerity on steroids. This kind of austerity will entail what feels like a lurch to the right. This will not do the EU any harm. It benefits them to see Scotland break up the UK and spiral down outside the EU. Open your damn eyes and see the world like a grown up. If Brexit has done nothing else it ought to have disabused you of the idea that the EU is some kind of fluffy utopian project. It is an empire, just and Britain once was. The modern SNP leadership are deluded and so are all of those who still follow them.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Ofcom was right to revoke the license of CGTN. It shouldn't stop there, though.

Fri, 5 Feb 2021 14:42:09 +0000

I don't agree with the ban. There is so much propaganda, state and otherwise now coming from almost every direction that banning some of it seems less balanced than just allowing it all. Ban and /or prosecute incitement etc and start teaching the young in particular how to approach information. Teach them how to think rather than what to think.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Roger Gale: Special relationship or coercion? America’s approach to extradition is not the conduct

Fri, 5 Feb 2021 14:19:46 +0000

Yes. Especially your last sentence. +1000

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Stephen Booth: Now our own Government says it may trigger Article 16 in Northern Ireland. Is the mo

Thu, 4 Feb 2021 10:11:52 +0000

Us Scots had a chance in 2014 to make all decisions Scottish decisions instead of British ones ,and declined the opportunity. The SNP argument that desperation to remain in the EU led to a No victory is untrue. For every No voter who voted that way in order to remain in the EU because they didn't believe SNP assurances on continuing membership, someone voted Yes because they did believe them. The two cancelled one another out leaving the stable majority with No. Grievance to the point of breaking up the union they ratified in 2014? I don't think that is correct. Less Scots actually voted for the SNP than voted for Brexit. Scots may have preferred to remain in the EU (why Scots and Irish in denial about EU integration and implications for independence another matter) but given a choice between one of two unions the majority were in favour of remaining in the UK. I say were. Over the past four years Remain/Rejoin UK have been engaged in blanket anti-UK propaganda and collusion with the SNP. The last time I looked the independence polling had bumped up to 51% and looked to be stuck at the rough 50/50 mark. Not much of a victory for independence or independence in the EU, but enough to begin to push Scotland towards civil unrest for decades. My advice to EU supporters tempted to enjoy the spectacle? Leave my badly divided country alone. You know nothing about it. Nothing. Scotland will pay a bitter price for your geopolitical gaming.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Andrew Gimson's PMQs sketch: Johnson the statesman is working for open borders by sea and land

Wed, 3 Feb 2021 14:48:48 +0000

Best laugh of the day. Thanks.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Our survey. Conservative activists back the Labour Party...

Tue, 2 Feb 2021 14:49:53 +0000

I don't think you actually understand basic logic. Speaking as a lifelong SNP supporter who left it all behind, I'd say their success now hinges on people like you who struggle with it. . I'm a firm believer in using democracy to settle constitutional disputes of this kind. I have no regrets about supporting a referendum. But the doctrine of material change that the SNP brought in to stave off having to hand in losers consent almost guarantees that democracy can't provide a settlement. One portion of a Scottish Yes vote is going to be unhappy whether Scotland stays out of or goes into the EU because the SNP has Scotland's most fervent eurosceptics and pro EU elements within it. Depending on which way this swings, a third referendum will be demanded. Possibly even a fourth. By the time we get to referendum number three we will be lucky if Scotland hasn't been plunged into perpetual civil unrest. But what we are doing to ourselves here is not all of it. We are making life harder for everyone who is seeking democratic redress of such issues. When Madrid refuses the Catalans any referendum. they justify the refusal by asserting that the separatists are no true democrats. They will always refuse a loss and process will be never ending and highly destabilizing. Scotland has now illustrated the truth of this for many. Well done us.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Instead of EU vaccine nationalism, let's have UK vaccine internationalism

Mon, 1 Feb 2021 10:11:36 +0000

Yes. I know zero about how any of this works and this even occurred to me. I wonder if there have been any policy papers pushed out by people who have a different take from the WHO on how to get the world vaccinated quickly ?

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : John Redwood: Let's hear more debate about how the Church of England enjoys its privileges

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 11:02:46 +0000

The Archbishop only meant to refer to the Christian context in a very broad way. In the mind of (my) progressive tribe, the EU is the moral project. But the EU is now at a paradoxical point where all of the very real gains that it has had stand to be lost due to the way it has been programmed. The intergovernmental actors that have benefitted from peace must now be dismantled to allow Brussels the role of sole executive, because that is what Monnet’s method made inevitable . There is no resting place until this job is finished. The scene has already been set for using the mechanisms of soft authority and information to achieve final integration . Those who oppose this final push for a wide variety of reasons have been grouped together as populists being played by dark connections outside Europe. As Robert Tombs once astutely remarked - what is it about a larger European state that protects Europeans from the sins of the past instead of amplifying them? I think sadly, the answer is nothing. Pro Europeans are now like the Calvinist elect who think themselves saved by God’s grace - the EU project - rather than their own actions. They act for the greater glory of this moral project with frighteningly little self awareness. I hope that Europe hasn’t given up empire in order to become empire, and that it has not walked away from intergovernmental war only to walk towards civil war. I say this as a Scot who has travelled in a circle since childhood around this question of state and seen it from so many different directions. I cling to the mast of European democracy and won’t let go. This is a ship I am prepared to go down with, not the ship of any state.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : The Good Union

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 12:51:03 +0000

A love bomb is never a bad thing. What does it look like? Trying to reverse demonize Johnson would help. Every overture is going to look like a potential assault if this problem of perception helped along by UK remainer media can't get fixed. If there’s a lonely spad sent to comb through these comments on occasion, I truly feel sorry for you, but please read this. I’m an ex SNP supporter who voted for Johnson, admires him and wishes him well. I know what I speak of. Don’t let the SNP/ EU co-opt the home country flags. Brexit Britain needs to be much much cleverer than waving a Union Jack around. It doesn’t win over the middle ground in Scotland in the short term who have always felt an instinctive worry about that symbol. Fairly or unfairly, here in Scotland among a lot of people the union jack is associated with an authoritarian aspect of the UK union and NI unionism. Diminish that worry at no cost by increasing the worry about the EU flag being a potentially much worse symbol of imperial power. Stress that the Jack’s bright colours have long passed into a more benign, voluntarist and democratic heraldic function while the omnipresent blue and yellow flag represents a more ruthless empire on it’s way up. Achieve this by getting Johnson associated with the Union Jack and the constituent flags including the Welsh dragon alongside it. A heraldic rainbow. At other times he could appear so laid back he doesn’t need flags at all.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : The Good Union

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 15:52:22 +0000

I'm a Scot, but this did make me laugh.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Johnson can say all the right words. But not in a way that people relate to, as Blair and

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 11:43:42 +0000

reins not reigns

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Johnson can say all the right words. But not in a way that people relate to, as Blair and

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 11:41:07 +0000

As someone who gave losers consent and left it all behind after 2014, I feel the constant, disorienting effect you get when making your way through a massed crowd travelling in the opposite destination these days. Sturgeon admirable, really? Sturgeon was a decent local politician, but is of limited intelligence in ethical and strategic matters. Unfortunately this deficiency is lethal now as she is the leader of a small country that now seems set to play a pivotal role in the cohesion (or not) of the European project. The fact that the federalists bent on maintaining survival hold the EU reigns and they are as Machiavellian as hell seems not to occur to her. She is still holding to the EU mission statements. From their point of view actual Scottish accession looks like a liability. If Scotland is to suffer austerity better to let it suffer that within the UK due to it's own administration failing to co-operate with UK economic strategy. This can easily be transformed to a failure of the UK government to help Scotland. A broken up UK will be easier for a federal EU to have another attempt at digesting. Any way you look at it, Scottish suffering is useful to the EU, and the Scots are really now being assigned the historic role of pulling the Welsh and English back into the fold. The resistors of an old empire have become the lackeys of a new one. A deluded Scotland under a deluded leader betrays it's beleaguered neighbours on behalf of the regional power for no gain, only pain. We Scots may always have been an impoverished minority in this union, but we used to be rated for our brains and a certain brand of honour. Under Sturgeon's leadership there are no signs of either.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Henry Hill: 'Stronger together' - Ministers put vaccine at the centre of its latest pro-Union push

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:17:18 +0000

Excellent post. Agree with every single point you have made here.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Vaccines. The United Kingdom v a "rules-based organisation".

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:28:55 +0000

Collaboration is vital, but the devil as ever lies in the detail. You have to look at what kind of collaboration is possible, and speedy. We are where we are. We don’t have a global vaccine organization that can act quickly and vaccinate on a global basis according to medical priority. We don’t even have a regional one. The EU may have strengths (I sincerely hope they do) at some point in this fight against Covid, but at the moment they are a liability. They take too long to act, and they have the power to hold others back. The collaboration that is possible and is indeed already happening globally is one where we have those who can, doing what they can as quickly as they can, seeing a clear way through to the finish line and running back to help the rest. The UK has huge rates of infection and mega rates of genome sequencing. Collaboration between Oxford, the NHS, SAGE/NERVTAG achieves an overview of this race against Covid that is almost unparalleled in the world. If we don’t get a lid on our own infections and the growing numbers of variants that will arise as a result of them, we are no help here eventually to anyone else, but a liability Let us help ourselves while helping others, and have faith that the philanthropic doctors and scientists of Oxford would not allow themselves to be used as a front for self defeating selfishness . At the end of the day if you think that intergovernmentalism is always bad, if you think that those who are not tied to one another by contract or trade necessity cannot be trusted to help one another at a time of a global humanitarian crisis, then really the whole world is buggered already. For the EU to carry the Brexit fight into the Covid arena is too depressing for words. For some Brexiters to retaliate in kind, ditto. Let's get a grip people and not become what we are unfairly accused of.