johnoflothian

johnoflothian

30p

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3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Henry Hill: Gove's cha... · 2 replies · +1 points

Part 3

(continues) What horror the triggering of Article 16 could yet unleash. Now is the time for Brexiers and our fellow Unionists to display the very thing the despicable Remainers could not, a calm head, a spirit of compromise and an awareness that terrorism still lurks in NI and it is not to be encouraged under any circumstances. Before the run in to the NI Assembley elections of 2022, least they become inflamed by the Protocol question, an agreement must be reached to “update and supercede” the Protocol with banks, allowing both sides to monitor trade. This can be sold by Nationalists as being part of any United Ireland settlement making the economic question easier to argue, which they can at least try to pass off as helping them in their ultimate goal.

The Unionists have the satisfaction of holding the Damaclean sword of a full public airing of the events 2017-19 should a border poll be called in the generation that comprises Eastwood, McDonald Coveney and Varadkar. The Dublin establishment will go Siberean on a border poll. “Soul-searching’ and internal feuding within Nationalism as to what’s gone on and who is responsible, is a responsibility their leadership must bear alone.

If all major players agree to keep a full investigation into 2017-19, and the leveraging of terrorism charge, out of public life, this is one a settlement that should hold. “No one wants to go back to the bad old days” has always been true.

This also means that for Obornes profession of journalism a full honest inquest into what happened 2017-19, must also be muted. For the ‘leveraging of terrorist violence’ allegation has a long and potentially vicious tail. So there we have it, journalists not able to make public the greatest political scandal in British Irish and EU history out of a responsible sense of public duty – how’s that for new standards in public life, Mr Oborne?

So let us instead content ourselves with summarizing what happen between 2017-19, of which Peter Oborne himself, is the perfect case study. The Remain establishment went mad. (Ends)

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Henry Hill: Gove's cha... · 0 replies · +1 points

Part 2

(continues) As with the ‘May majority scenario’, political reality – EU and Dublin saving their own worthless skins from the blazing inquisition that would have followed – meaning a “pause button” would have been hit and a “unique NI status” agreement reached. Seeing the horrified reactions in Dublin and latterly Brussels to the triggering of Article 16 and the sudden readiness to “look again at how the Protocol functions” bare witness to this (they know full well what they did). If not, the greatest political scandal in British Irish and EU history- the opportunistic leveraging of terrorism - would have fallen on their collective heads. It is safe to say they value their collective skins more highly than their dignity and new phased in arrangements would have been agreed.

But of course, the Remain Parliament, and the corrupt Lady Hale and her legal stooges, put pay to an election in October 2019.

This is the explanation as to how we arrived at a sea border ‘the liar Johnson’ would have given if he were as truthful as Oborne so furiously, so priggishly, demands he should be. Looking at the consequences of such truthfulness, unleashing the greatest political scandal in our history, is Johnson not to be commended for his ‘dishonesty’? For is not his ‘dishonesty’ keeping a lid on a full cross-examination of EU-Remains reaction to 2017 election result and all that followed? Is Johnson not, astonishingly, actually protecting the very people who damn him as a liar from publicly bearing the consequences of their own despicable actions, duplicity and lies? He is. And he does so because a full investigation into what actually went on 2017-19, so heavily implicates all political Remainers, the entire Dublin, NI Nationalist and Brussels establishment, that it would produce a collapse of general confidence in Irish politics in particular (and the prospect of a United Ireland), that it very well could produce the very thing that EU-Remain only wished to threaten, the resumption of terrorist violence.

How could such a searing demander of truth in public life as Peter Oborne, not see all this? The fallout from the GE2017 was enabled by the simplest truism in politics:”it’s a numbers game.” How did alarm bells not ring when EU Remain started to leverage the threat of terrorism – in NI – against the GFA principles of national sovereignty determined by democratic consent, to achieve either their most desired end the sabotaging of Brexit (which Oborne himself voted for) or as a ‘pound of flesh’ compromise a final settlement that could only have seen the defining GFA of national sovereignty undermined and NI in part cut adrift, with all the bad blood and legitimate anger that was bound to follow? Was either of these outcomes not a more egregious befouling of ‘standards in public life’ than anything “the Liar Johnson” ever even conceived of? Where was Oborne’s political antenna, his commitment to truth, and, yes, to morality?

Perhaps Oborne will come to see the truth as the facts are plain to any independent minded citizen or journalist who is conversant with the events, the passions involved and how power operates, and determined to uphold that other standard in public life, holding power to account. But I must warn Oborne against making a public mea culpa. For were the facts of what happened 2017-19 brought into plain public view the consequences I’ve already described could yet explode into public consciousness. I take it on suspicion, as honour and trust can no longer apply, that Oborne takes his own responsibility to not let that happen as seriously as Boris Johnson.
(continues)

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Henry Hill: Gove's cha... · 0 replies · +1 points

I quote the excellent 3-part comment given by JP Mallen24 to Peter Oborne's similar comments to your own. a few days ago at https://www.conservativehome.com/highlights/2021/... :

Part 1

Peter Oborne charges Boris Johnson with “bare-faced lies in all its moral squalor” for saying “there would be no checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Boris Johnson was and is lying about those indisputable facts.

But how would Johnson answer if he were to take such a high minded idea of lying in public life as Mr Oborne?

Johnson’s argument – the same argument anyone conversant with the political facts would concluded is correct – would be this: the GE2017 (which Johnson warned against calling though Oborne championed) changed the political arithmetic of Brexit completely. Had May won, with her manifesto commitments “no deal is better than a bad deal” and “as frictionless a border as possible” the EU negotiators would have faced two choices. Find a North-South border solution that preserved the sovereign integrity of the UK (in full compliance with the GFA principles of national sovereignty and political consent purposely designed as they hold among honourable politicians under either sovereign claim) or trigger No Deal with a hard border on the RoI side and 12bn in tariffs for EU business. I think we can agree that faced with those options the EU would have agreed to “unique NI arrangements that respect NI unique history” and the NI question would been solved without the slightest drama, with, perhaps, a peace annex to the subsequent FTA, and everyone agreeing on how welcomingly mature NI politics had become.

Instead, as we all searingly know, May didn’t get majority, and with a hung Parliament, the EU and Remain attacked. Solutions that would have been regarded as signs of a maturing Irish polity under a May majority, were dismissed by EU negotiators and derided as “rainbow farting unicorns” by the idiot pit of Remain Twitter. But that wasn’t enough, of course, for the EU and Remain needed to go further. With the default No Deal, No Deal had to be nuclearized, and a terrorist violence had to be leveraged with and explicit link to “a return to the bad old days if we go down that road.”

The original Johnson-Cummings plan was to call an election in October 2019, timed so Johnson, had he won, could arrive at that weekends meeting of EU with a mandate for No Deal and a willingness to renegotiate the NI aspect of any deal. The cliffedge would then have been the EU’s to walk over. Had they done so, the arguments as to how we’d arrived at that ‘cliffedge’, hinging on the 2017 result, would have been brought into public view and despicable opportunism that lay at the heart of the EU’s negotiating strategy would have come out in logical argument. Would the EU and Dublin have ever taken position into public debate? With, Will the leveraging of terrorist violence be seen as acceptable in a hung Parliament in a United Ireland? being but one of many devastating questions it would have thrown up? (continues)

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Andrew Gimson's PMQs s... · 0 replies · +1 points

+1

Certainly the followers are deluded. I don't think Tricky Nicky cares about anything but lust for power and obsession with her gender identity and is entirely cynical about means to those ends.

If the penny has dropped with Johnson that jobs jobs jobs, real ones, in Scotland, are the key to defeating separatism, then thank goodness.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Meghan Gallacher: Scot... · 1 reply · +1 points

+1 jock.

Pertwee, it's the mark of the propagandist to claim to be unstoppable. A democrat would set out cogent reasons to urge and to expect a given outcome and invite agreement and support. I remember a few days before the 2014 referendum rounding a corner in Edinburgh and seeing in huge day-glo colours on a hoarding the written message "SOMETHING AMAZING IS HAPPENING". - the real message being We're going to win, if you're smart you'll be on the right side. Actually a lot of people don't like that. And you didn't win, did you?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - John Redwood: Let's he... · 1 reply · +1 points

Completely with you, Antiestab. In fact during Covid the whole C of S establishment seems to have rushed to be more secular than the secularists and more authoritarian then Wee Crankie. My particular bete-noire is about hymns. One, we obey the law, and two, it sadly does make sense that singing sprays out particles. So we can't sing. But as the 30 (if that) of us sit (lockdown permitting) 2 metres apart wearing our masks, how could humming spread more particles than we already spread by breathing, which is currently still allowed? A few ministers have taken that point and have far happier congregations. Dead silence from official C of S, and most ministers like mine hide behind the Word proceeding from 121 George St, Edinburgh.

Two people are spared the imprisonment in masks, by reason of their onerous duties: the organist (doing a great job) and the minister who of course has to be able to speak to the congregation -otherwise what would the point of the service be? I ponder that question a lot.

Again, a Church that took the needs of its flock seriously would have insisted on the right to remain open for private prayer.

If the RC's get braver I might decide to join them. Credal beliefs are nowadays for the individual to keep his/her own counsel about, whatever the clergy, reformed or Roman, would like us to think, so why not just go to the church with the more nourishing worship?

Your fellow Elder.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - John Redwood: Let's he... · 1 reply · +1 points

"Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have I give thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk" - words attributed to St Peter, Acts 3:6

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Andrew Bowie: That wee... · 0 replies · +1 points

Dear DB

Regarding the economic effect of the euro I would point you to a classic Guardian article from 2001 which has been entirely borne out by events https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/dec/29/... , and explain that while we kept the pound the UK was much affected by the devastating youth unemployment wrought by the euro, e.g. by downward pressure on wages, and upward pressure on house prices and rents. Freedom of movement has costs.

And here's this about the current instability and riskiness of the Eurozone https://oliverhartwich.com/2020/12/22/the-coming-... .

I notice you didn't address my points about the reduction of the value of our Westminster votes ( to local authority levels) as the EU took over more and more powers unstoppably given the Lisbon constitution with its enhanced ECJ powers, and the weight of the Franco-German axis. Of course this is not a subject that Miss Sturgeon chooses to address either.. And its exactly why the Blair government put its power behind splitting up the United Kingdom. Fortunately England rejected regional Balkanisation.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Andrew Bowie: That wee... · 5 replies · +1 points

Well said Mr Bowie.

Such similarities … we should ask ourselves why in both the 2014 Scottish and 2016 EU referendums the status-quo side relied on project fear and failed to mount any substantial case for the benefits of Union.

I think that the short answer is that in setting out the pros they would have to acknowledge the cons. In Brexit, they would have been forced to acknowledge the already huge erosion, and (within the EU) enormous momentum to further erosion of national sovereignty and with it any meaningful democracy, which was the cost of the political, economic and cultural benefits such as they were. Not to mention revealing the 50 year deceit practised upon us by our own governments to hide this. And the dire disaster which was and is the Euro, affecting us not least through immigration, despite retaining the pound. That downside was frankly unaddressable within the EU and I for one am thankful we came out however much of a struggle it will prove – because I do believe in the moral and political and ultimately economic value of a democratic system where all politicians are conscious the voters might, just might, get rid of them.

What are the cons of the British Union for Scotland? It seems obvious that for many many decades with the decline and disappearance of the great industrial businesses we in Scotland have suffered an enormous loss of opportunities for gainful employment within Scotland. The benefits of the upward struggle for an individual are not obvious. From that, flow all manner of horrors in education, drug culture, vandalism etc etc as we all know, not to mention quiet defeated lives.

Of course the same was true in huge swathes of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales the result was Brexit. In Northern Ireland and Scotland nationalist issues however were live enough to complicate the issues, big time.

Who wants to be a (Barnett formula) benefit junkie? Absolutely nobody.

The British government has to convince “the people of Scotland” that it is not content to tolerate a situation where only the south and the university cities are prosperous. Enormous though the problem is, so long as it can demonstrate coherent attempts to address the problem, I think it will have the moral advantage in the “independence” (ha-ha!) debate, even if the Scots don’t like Boris very much – or so we’re told.

Please attempt it! Or else an awful lot of us up here might well be dragged back into the maw of Brussels very much against our will, losing so many of those priceless freedoms that in the last 300 years we have come to delude ourselves to think normal.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Discuss · 0 replies · +1 points

Despite this particular episode, as far as I'm concerned Baker gives the Tories a good name, one of too few. Shipman's book on the EU referendum details all the tactical battles Baker won to give Leave a chance, including (1) purdah, (2) Leave/Remain rather than Yes/No (3) putting the pieces back together again after the failed coup against Cummings, (4) nipping in the bud Osborne's threat of a punishment budget and converting it into a weapon for Leave . And the Spartans last stand in the third vote on May's appalling "deal" saved Brexit, period.

Baker is a Parliamentarian, holding government to account, and the meaningfulness of that body where the public's votes do count, is what Brexit was all about. And the truth of that was demonstrated over and over again, first in forcing Cameron to hold the referendum, and finally all through the agonies of the Remainer fightback which nevertheless failed due to voter pressure.

The country is mesmerised by serious propaganda into focussing on Covid and only on Covid, and to say that is not to be a "Covid denier" - another trope of propaganda. What about "long lockdown"? How essential it is for Parliament to provide constructive loyal criticism.

Go, Steve. If this has blown up in your face I'm sure you will lick your wounds, learn lessons and come back stronger.