Two dangerous politicians and a Ponsonby at this week’s ‘independence’ debate on Scottish Television.
Subrosa alerted me to the STV debate the other day between these leaders of the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns of the Scottish ‘Independence’ referendum which is taking place in six weeks’ time.
Approaching a decade since I bought a television licence, I couldn’t watch it live, but I managed to listen to it today online while working. I’m delighted I wasn’t sat in front of the telly for two hours, including adverts, because we didn’t learn much, if anything.
Subrosa reckons that, from the twenty minutes she watched, Alex Salmond’s performance was flat, while,
Alistair Darling appeared to be his usual self - just managing to stay slightly above the ‘boring’ threshold.
I don’t know about that. The whole programme seemed designed to tell us next to nothing thanks to the chairman, Bernard Ponsonby’s, questioning, the audience’s participation and the two protagonists obsessed with the same narrow range of topics with both repeatedly refusing to answer simple questions.
I wouldn’t trust either of them to run a secondhand clothing stall at a jumble sale never mind a country.
I took notes, but very little was noteworthy. Alex Salmond said that if Scots voted for independence there would be the “certainty of democracy”. Considering that in his crusade to carpet Scotland with giant wind turbines, his regime has overruled local councils many times, reversing their decisions to deny more wind farms. And nearly two-thirds of respondents to his fake consultation on same-sex ‘marriage’ said, ‘No thanks’, but he’s decided it’s going ahead anyway. In fact the SNP had broadcast their intent before the consultation was even issued.
This is Alex Salmond’s idea of ‘democracy’.
One of Alistair Darling’s ‘concerns’ was about Scotland’s ageing population and our ability to pay a decent pension (he knows what that’s like having been the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer), but as Salmond said, a properly managed Scotland with more opportunities would persuade the 37,000 young Scots who leave annually to stay here. Encouraging Scots to have more children is required and it is well known that Salmond wants boatloads of immigrants arriving on our shores, so it needn’t be a permanent issue.
Not that I believe for a nanosecond that he and his comrades are anything like the sort of people we need to manage the country.
Apparently, Scotland has a larger proportion of pensioners than the rest of the UK, presumably because older English people sell their homes and buy something similar in a nice area up here for half the price and so release a large amount of money to help them enjoy their retirement.
I would have said that Salmond had the upper hand had it not been for a certain question asked by Darling over and over and also by some members of the audience – about Scotland’s currency should we be denied the use of the pound sterling.
Salmond insisted that he had Plans B, C, D and E, but no amount of pressure seemed to get answers to what these were. He blethered away continuously that the pound would be best for Scotland and the rest of the UK.
If you ask me, all he had to say was that most countries in the World, many much smaller than Scotland, have their own currencies. Next question, please!
His constant evasion was embarrassing and Darling was like a dog with the juiciest bone he had ever seen and couldn’t let go. In fact almost the entire time he had to question Salmond himself was devoted to what our currency would be. To no avail, but in wasting so much time when there are so many other questions that need answers to he made Salmond look totally clueless.
Salmond had his moment of firing the same unanswered question too, even comparing it to Paxman’s famous interrogation of Michael Howard. “Did you threaten to overrule him?”
He continually asked Darling if he agreed with David Cameron that Scotland could be a successful independent country like other small European countries. He skated around the issue like Torvill and Dean. Politicians expect us to listen to them for two hours and cannot give a straight answer to a straightforward question.
They really do behave appallingly, yet they have great power over us, insisting that we behave and even think exactly according to their twisted worldview. They steal nearly half of our money in taxes and have already thieved a great many freedoms from us and they have the gall to whine away about ‘democracy’ all the time, as if a cross on a ballot paper is going to make a whit of difference, unless maybe a party like UKIP gets more votes than all the other parties combined.
At one point, Mr Ponsonby asks if the sovereignty of the people is a fiction.
Alistair Darling,
Of course I believe in the sovereignty of the people.
Says he who was a big part in the New Labour social re-engineering experiment, which meant almost ignoring completely the will and best interests of the people of the United Kingdom. According to Wikipedia,
Darling was one of only three people to have served in the Cabinet continuously from Labour’s victory in 1997 until its defeat in 2010 (the others being Gordon Brown and Jack Straw).
In his closing statement, Salmond had three points to make.
Number 1 was that the party we vote most for north of the border will always end up in government. At least half the time since he has been voting, he concluded, we did not end up with a government that Scots wanted (in other words, Tory governments).
Number 2 was that a prosperous economy would produce a just society. He didn’t explain how our windmill-powered future and (even more) extortionate prices for electricity would help facilitate this. Or what constitutes a ‘just society’.
Number 3 was that Scots will always be best at running Scotland.
Now that is pithy. Considering (like the Scottish Executive/Parliament) we are bound to have consecutive Labour and SNP governments running ruining Scotland. Salmond has proven himself to be somewhat of a dictator with a fixation for anything environmental and politically correct and Labour’s “Scottish Mafia” made a complete hash of trying to run the UK.
Which is a real shame because Scotland really is very well-endowed with mineral wealth, fisheries, forestry, agricultural land, financial services and large tourist numbers, but I’m afraid that with both Salmond and Darling pledging allegiance to Brussels and their parties and governments having a history of subverting and destroying their country and obliterating freedoms, neither an ‘independent’ Scotland run from Brussels/Geneva nor an EU/UN-controlled United Kingdom appeals to me.
What will I do with my vote?
Vote for the lesser of two evils? Sorry, but I wised up to that silly game years ago and anyway, I don’t know which qualifies for the title. I may not vote in this sham. It only encourages them.
I’ll leave the last words to Paul Simon and some lyrics from “Mrs Robinson”:
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidates’ debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it,
When you’ve got to choose.
Every way you look at this you lose.
