·
Feb.
28 20 14 - 09.30. The council chamber at Renfrewshire Council has a "buzz
about the place" as Councillors assemble for the first time ever under the
unforgiving gaze of the TV cameras. The assembled crowd in the public gallery
has been noticeably increased to what looked like a swaying mass of four
people. The conduct of the snp was noticeably improved, not a difficult thing
to do I hear you say but progress nevertheless. The most contentious part of
the proceedings was a typically spurious motion by the snp attacking Labour and
Tory peers for remarks allegedly made which, according to them politicised the
coming referendum by abusing the dead and injured of WW1. The snp have
'previous' for unintentional irony in case anyone is unaware of their fragile
grasp on reality.
The object of
their synthetic rage was Lord Lang the Tory peer who suggested that it was
insulting the dead of that war by trying to break up the country which they had
died for, Labour peers in particular Helen Liddle were also in their sights.
Their powers of hypocrisy know no bounds as was witnessed by their own blatant
attempts to politicise the conflict by perversely insisting that Lord Lang and Baroness
Liddle had insulted the Scottish war dead with their remarks. In my
contribution I defended the right of Lord Lang to have an opinion and his right
to express it, likewise Baroness Liddle, this brought hysterical opprobrium
upon me from in particular snp cllrs. A Doig, McEwan and Nicolson. These three had decided that my declaration
in favour of free speech and opinion meant that I was a right wing Tory and
worse, particularly from Nicolson who has a distinct talent for mangling shredding
and generally beating up the English language that has not been seen since the heyday
of the late great Professor Stanley Unwin.
From these
exchanges I believe we were seeing what would happen to people who did express
views and opinions contrary to those held by the snp if they had enough power,
they simply would not be allowed to express such opinions, the clamp downs
would be justified by doing it “for the cause” of course. I am happy to declare
that if my defence of freedom of speech and the right to form personal opinions
is a crime I am guilty as charged.
The tenuous
grasp on political reality and understanding was hilariously demonstrated by
snp councillor Mylett who is another ‘brammer’, the snp tried to attack Labour
because 47 of our Mp’s did not attend a debate on the bedroom tax, this led to Labour
Cllrs. Mark MacMillan and Mike Holmes patiently trying to explain the very easy
to understand practice known as the “pairing system” which allows Mp’s to be absent
at the same time as their ‘opposite pair’,
simples eh?, well not to the snp it’s not and in particular not simple to the cerebrally
challenged cllr. Mylett who bullishly opined that you can’t have a pairing
system with an odd number of MP’s (47) cllr. MacMillan heroically managed to
keep a straight face as he kindly explained to ex soldier Cllr. Mylett (yes he
was allowed around weaponry) that 47 Labour MP’s is equal to 47 Tory Mp’s and
no I am not making this up.
On he and the
snp ploughed though demanding to know if these Labour Mp’s were paid when they
did not show up for the vote. Labour Cllr. Mike Holmes then informed them that
snp Mp’s Mike Weir, Stewart Hosie, Angus McNeil, Eilidh Whiteford, Angus
Robertson and Pete Wishart had all failed on 5 occasions between them to turn
up for votes on the bedroom tax and, yes you’ve guessed it, they were all paid
for not turning up, and of course none of them had a pairing arrangement with
anyone giving the Tory/Libdem government an advantage which they did not get
when the 47 Labour Mp’s were paired.
This was a
humiliating day for the snp in Renfrewshire and to top it all it was revealed
that when the Scottish parliament led by snp finance minister John Swinney congratulated
Renfrewshire Council for it’s actions and initiatives to mitigate the effects
of the bedroom tax, Paisley MSP George Adam SNP despite being asked to join those
congratulations refused to do so. The really disturbing aspect of all this is
that the snp did not seem aware of what an embarrassing and humiliating day
they had just had. They want to run a separate Scotland you know, honestly they
do!.
