Any diligent reader of No Thanks! (there are a few) will have noticed from my last post that I’ve been away for a few days, somewhere else as our first minister would say ‘in these islands.’ On my return yet another manufactured SNP outrage is in full flow – Conservative MP and secretary of state for Scotland David Mundell’s opening of a foodbank in Dumfries.
I think that’s a full house the SNP have got now in the beasting of their remaining Scottish opponents at Westminster. The narrative goes something like this:
- Carmichael, Lib Dem, Orkney and Shetland – cheat, liar, we wuz robbed, Lib Dems are history, ‘Out! Out! Out!’
- Mundell, Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale – Viceroy of Scotland, foodbanks, disgrace, Tory-free zone, ‘Out! Out! Out!’
- Murray, Labour, Edinburgh South – ‘Who?’, Slab, Hahaha, betrayal, ‘Out! Out! Out!’
You’ll rarely find the fingerprints of the suits (and high heels) at the top of the SNP on this sort of stuff. But you don’t have to look far before you find an SNP branch or its members involved. And if the first wave of activists doesn’t work, send in reinforcements – the people who’ve got the wit to understand how you can mount a (probably spurious) legal case against an election result, the MP whose brain clicks into gear and realises there might have been a minor breach of parliamentary etiquette and someone went to someone else’s constituency without telling them (maybe).
One is of course touched by the concern of an SNP MP (someone called Arkless in this case) for parliamentary etiquette. This is the SNP in full hypocrisy mode, the same happy-clappies who applaud each other’s parliamentary speeches, pile onto the Labour front bench and shove Dennis Skinner out of the way to get a good seat.
There are many things the SNP should remember. One is that although they have 56 out of 59 MPs in Scotland, they got those seats with the lowest number of votes per elected MP of any party in the UK. Another is that just over 50% of us didn’t vote for them and don’t want them in power. Their air of continued triumphalism and determination to do down even the three non-SNP Scottish MPs in parliament is unseemly at best, sinister at worst.
I never agreed with their one arguably noble cause – independence – but I can see that properly pursued there could be a sort of moral high ground lurking in that overarching aim. Sadly, their day-to-day modus operandi shows them for what they really are. Scotland is warned.
Beasting – (Especially in the armed forces) the process of subjecting a new recruit to harsh treatment in order to instil discipline (Oxford online dictionary)
The Nation said No Thanks! 
The party line on the Mundell affair is that this is a part of ‘robust’ politics and that no one was arrested so no law was broken.
One wonders what the reaction would have been had it been Nicola Sturgeon getting this ‘robust’ treatment. As we all know, the cops would have been grabbing people within seconds and the squeaks of cyber outrage would waken bats in New Zealand.
I thought Strugeon would have stuck up for ‘Civic Scotland’ standards on the Mundell affair, but so far, not. Alas.
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I read the first two articles as you suggested. They both appear to back me up and not you. The first said that Dennis had other things on his mind and then the writer of the post said that this was referring to the seat problem with the SNP. But the author simply asserts this with no proof. An Denis himself certainly didn’t say it. The second article has SNP quoted as saying that they had no problem with Denis sitting where he alway sat.
So why did you refer me to this when it backs me up. I’m afraid I’m not now giving you the benefit of the doubt, I now think that you knew very well the situation with Denis and his seat. So why should we, your readers, believe anything else you writ in this article?
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Gordon – thanks for taking the time to comment. I had meant that you might wish to consider all the material the Google search threw up but we clearly interpret the same evidence differently. We’re not going to agree and there’s not much point in either of us picking away at single details. You ignore the rest of my argument but use the one single contentious fact between us to infer that the rest of what I say cannot be believed. Fair enough if that’s the way you see it. I assume you’re the same Gordon Jenkins who follows me on Twitter and implies he’s been out canvassing for the SNP in Aberdeen today. That’s also fair enough and if so I at least know where you’re coming from as you know where I’m coming from!
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Well let Dennis speak on the matter
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/27/dennis-skinner-queens-speech-quip-fighting-scots-nats
‘Dennis Skinner, the veteran Labour MP, says he failed to deliver his traditional state opening of parliament quip because he was too busy trying to keep SNP MPs from sitting in his seat to think of anything funny.
After Black Rod, currently Lieutenant General David Leakey, had the Commons door slammed in his face before being allowed entry as is custom, MPs waited for what they thought was to come next.
Yet the Beast Of Bolsover, whose annual caustic one-liner is almost as much part of the pomp and ritual as the Queen’s procession to parliament, remained silent.
“I’ve got bigger fish to fry than uttering something,” he told the Mirror. “I’ve been fighting some other battles, haven’t I? I was fighting the Scot Nats single-handed for a while.”
The Bolsover MP added that he had “a big battle” this morning to sit in his favoured seat in the corner front row of the green benches, which the SNP are trying to prise from him.
The new third-largest party in parliament, which took 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats at the election, seems to have made ousting Skinner from his “rebel’s bench” seat in Commons one of their early priorities.’
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