Dear Brothers and Sisters,
“Are you enjoying our Scottish weather?” This is not Scottish weather; was my response it may be chilly (18 degrees C) but there is constant sunshine. For me this is perfect weather – it’s one of the reasons that so many Europeans say they enjoy Australia.
A German told me that he loved the lifestyle and weather here – but missed the culture. For me that is a similar feeling – there is much to love about being here – but there is also a great deal to miss.
One thing I am not sorry to miss is the Scottish parliamentary election. And I will miss it. Over a week ago I tweeted that I was about to fill out my postal vote – which caused someone to ask – do you have a postal vote? Of course, I do – I am registered to vote – and I have been looking at the candidates and party manifestos before I vote. Then to my shock I discovered that my application to vote had been refused. Apparently, I can vote in a UK parliamentary election, but not in a Scottish one. How is that fair? Someone who is not a Scot, who has been living in Scotland for one month – and may leave in a couple of months – can still vote – but someone who is a Scottish citizen, whose family are in Scotland, who is a registered voter, who still pays tax, who has a house in Scotland, who intends to return and who has lived for decades in Scotland, is not permitted to vote. I guess the Scottish government think that anyone outwith their immediate sphere of influence is too dangerous to be allowed to vote. So, I am not allowed to vote in Australia, nor am I allowed to vote in my home country.
Having said that I suppose I should be relieved that I don’t have to make the choice – it’s not a particularly appealing one. Most of the main political parties seem to be operating on essentially the same philosophy and have the same level of incompetence. There are individual politicians in all parties who I would be inclined to vote for – but they are few and getting fewer – people like Jenny Marra (Labour) leaving parliament is a huge loss. But I guess I could sum up my view right now as belonging to the ABN party – Anyone But Nicola. From having voted for her – something I now regret and repent of – I now see her as either one of the most incompetent or one of the most dangerous and divisive politicians of our time. Perhaps she is both. Why do I feel so strongly about this?
Because I believe that Nicola, and the authoritarian cult around her – (aided and abetted by the Greens – ie. the rebranded Communists) is destroying the Scotland I know and love. I don’t think she is doing it deliberately – but that is largely irrelevant. The destruction she is wrecking is happening – whether deliberate or not. And having read her manifesto it is about to get a lot worse.
Let me list the reasons why I hope that by some kind of miracle, she is not re-elected. (although there are a couple of individual SNP MSPs I would vote for, and although I still support Independence). I say ‘a miracle’ because she is almost certain to be re-elected – the opposition is too weak, the cult of Nicola too strong, the media (especially the BBC) too supine and she has most of ‘civic Scotland’ in her pocket. I don’t like personalising politics as though it is all about the leader, but this is so much about Nicola Sturgeon that the SNP apparently even considered having the party name beside the candidate with her name alongside. Whilst at a personal level she may be a very nice person, and she is certainly an excellent communicator – voters should vote not on perceived personality or on communication skills, but rather on policies and what she is communicating. This is what I have picked up so far. (And I have read far more than is healthy for a sane person to do!)
- Unlike her predecessor she is an economic illiterate. Here for example is Nicola apparently not knowing what the difference is between a debt and a deficit. For ordinary punters, that is fine – but not for the leader of the country. The fact that she admitted to not knowing what independence would mean economically for Scots is breath-taking. She promises over £6 billion worth of freebies but doesn’t tell us how she is going to pay for them (other than drawing on the Bank of Westminster – a bank she says she wants to leave.) It’s also well worth looking at the promises that the SNP made in its last manifesto – which they have not kept. https://twitter.com/_sarahmasson/status/1382738364466614277?s=20
Here is the goodie list as expounded by one of her potential MSPs – note that all of this is to be paid for without increasing income tax – or indeed any tax!
2) She is a disaster for the poor.
The SNP have become the party of middle-class subsidies. Now she is promising to give free dental care, free school meals and free laptops to the middle class (amongst other goodies). This is money that could be spent on the poor and especially on Scotland’s declining education system and NHS. But instead she will waste millions on handouts for the middle class. Her drug policy (where she admitted that she ‘took her eye of the ball’) is a disaster. As is her housing and especially her family policy. I have watched with increasing despair the effect of SNP policy (and the Woke philosophy on which much of it is based) on the poor in Dundee’s housing estates. Free laptops are not much use if your home is dysfunctional, your house is not fit for purpose, and your school is just a social engineering/baby sitting institution. Nicola’s philosophy is that the State is a better parent than real parents – which is why she is promising a ‘wrap around childcare system’…We are in danger of being smothered by Big Mammy!
3) She doesn’t know, or won’t tell us, what a woman is.
I watched one of her online videos in what she introduced herself with her name and then ‘my chosen pronouns are she/her’. Nicola and her politicians cannot tell us what a woman is. Despite significant opposition in her own party – especially from women – she is pressing ahead with her gender recognition bill. One that will do a great deal of harm and one that will continue to permit what I consider to be a form of state sponsored child abuse.
4) She doesn’t want independence.
She talks about independence – but I question whether anyone in the senior ranks of the Scottish government really wants independence. They are proposing to take us out of one union, into an even larger one. When your laws, economy, agriculture, and fishing are largely run by an outside supranational body, whatever you may call it – it is not independence. Nicola does not believe that Scotland could stand on its own (what we used to call independence). The SNP have become the EUNP – and make the same Unionist arguments for the EU, that the Tories make for the UK.
5) She is a supporter of the culture of death.
Not only did her MPs in Westminster (with a couple of honourable exceptions) vote to impose abortion on Northern Ireland – now we are told that the new SNP government will set up a ‘Citizens Assembly’ to look at euthanasia again. Every time it has been brought up in the Scottish parliament it has been defeated. So now the SNP are going to take the cowards way out – set up a ‘Citizens Assembly’ where non-elected, carefully selected members of the public will come up with a report which tells the government to do what the government were going to do anyway.
6) She wants to use the education system to indoctrinate children into her Woke political philosophy.
It has been a custom in Scottish politics that politicians do not tell teachers what to teach – no longer. Now schools are the primary indoctrinators into the cult of Nicola. It’s not just on matters of sexual ethics, or what is a human being. Take this report for example –
The SNP has published plans to force Scottish schoolchildren to “face the UK’s colonial past” in Black Lives Matter-inspired history lessons.Historians and teachers raised concerns that a new programme of “anti-racist education” which Nicola Sturgeon plans to roll out will present pupils with a one-sided, negative, and politicised version of Britain’s history. The SNP included the pledge to commission a taxpayer-funded teaching programme inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in its manifesto for the Holyrood elections next month – which opinion polls suggest the party will almost certainly win.This would highlight “Scotland and the UK’s colonial history” and all schools would be urged to adopt it.“It is blinkered, distorting and racist to teach history through the narrow perspective proposed by the SNP,” Chris McGovern, a retired headteacher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said.“Humankind’s capacity for good and evil has nothing to do with skin colour. The SNP’s education policy needs to stop playing truant with truth.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/16/snp-force-schoolchildren-face-uks-colonial-past-black-lives/
I suspect that the kind of ‘history’ the SNP are promising will not include the role of Scottish immigrants in the formation of the KKK, or the support of some in the SNP for Hitler, or other historical complexities along those lines. We will get the Woke BLM re-write with a tartan tinge.
7) She is a dishonest and manipulative politician –
I wrote this tweet (which had over 330,000 views) to illustrate one point.It’s how she works.
Mind you Nicola does have some nerve – complaining that Boris Johnson’s government needs to be investigated for corruption when she (and her husband, the head of the SNP) used every trick in the book to prevent them being properly investigated.
8) She is a very divisive person.
Of course, politicians will divide, but such is the cult of Nicola, that if you dare to disagree with her, the finger-wagging starts, and the dog whistle goes out to ‘the people of Scotland’ who leap to her defence with lots of dog’s abuse. Politics in Scotland under Nicola’s watch has become even meaner and more vicious. In the name of love, she is turning my country into a cesspit of hate. This exchange with the inept current leader of the opposition and the impressive Anar Sarwar illustrates it well.
9) She is leading Scotland towards a kind of soft totalitarianism.
Her politicians are not allowed to publicly disagree with her ‘party policy’. But worse than that she uses political power on academics, the arts, businesses and even churches. This SNP party political broadcast is really creepy.
‘There is only one way’ we are told as we seen screens of her face beaming down upon us. It’s Orwell’s 1984 in Scotland 2021. In a way it’s kind of apt in that Nicola has been on our screens every day – even during the election getting all the free publicity she can get as the mother of the nation. I think this borders on illegal – it’s certainly unfair – there are other government officials who can give us the Covid information. We don’t need Mammy to reassure us.
Conclusion: Recoup, Restore, Regenerate.
In the advert it says that we should ‘recoup, restore and regenerate’. I want that. But not in Nicola’s Cult. Recoup will turn into ruin. Restore is a good word. For me voting for Nicola is voting for destruction, not restoration. In fact if I was allowed to I would vote for Ewan Gurr and the Restore party – his manifesto is here… https://restorescotland.org/news/ewan-gurr-why-i-am-standing-for-dundee-west/
But regenerate is the most important word. I weep for Scotland – because I see all that the Lord has done through our wee nation, having declined over a long period of time, now being given the coup de grace by a woman and party who haven’t a clue what they are doing. I see the people like sheep without a shepherd, a church largely which has lost its prophetic voice, and a nation which is regressing in the name of progress, at an alarming rate. Scotland needs to be reborn. The people of Scotland need real regeneration – without which we cannot even see the kingdom of God, never mind enter it. Nicola will not lead us, not into the promised land, but rather 40 years in the wilderness. Lord, bless and pity us! (Psalm 80).
We pray on,
David
Let me add that I hope I am wrong about this – but I have been involved in Scottish politics for over 30 years and I have seen this trajectory – so I don’t think I am (although I would love to be!). It is with increasing horror that I have watched the SNP turn from a chaotic party (with at least some good ideals) into an authoritarian cult like party. The corruption stinks to high heaven….but who dares say it?
PS. I have been asked about the other party leaders. So (this is just my personal perspective) here is a brief summary. Ross seems way out of his depth (the Tories overall have been a major disappointment). Sarwar I don’t really know but he has had a good campaign so far. Rennie is nice but no body seems to take him seriously. Harvie is a dangerous ideologue, who knows exactly what he is doing and, in my view, is the most fanatical and dangerous politician in Scotland.
PPS. I note that people are already commenting with insults. ‘Dangerous right nonsense’ is the kind of comment that the cultists use. There is nothing right wing about what I have said. But even if there was – so what. Answer the points made – don’t just resort to abuse.
The End of the Dream – Why the SNP Have Given up on Independence – Part 1
An Open Challenge to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP Leadership