A Union rag on your driving licence?

The recent announcement that the UK Government has decided to put a Union rag on UK driving licences has clearly not been thought through. According to the Daily Post it will “provide road users with a symbolic sign of their national identity”. Regular readers will realise this is in fact nonsense as British is not the national identity of the majority of people in Britain.

How do I know this, well, they told us so via the most recent census'. In 2011 in the census of Englandandwales and the 2011 census of Scotland.

UK propaganda debunked - Share via twitter | facebook

The backlash

Like many people I was disappointed that the selfish and the scared had robbed the young and the poor of a better future in Scotland's independence referendum. I honestly thought the yes campaign were going to do it but I hadn't counted on the size of the no vote from the pensioners.

One thing I had expected though was a backlash, either the backlash from England against Scotland had they voted no or a backlash from England against Wales should Scotland have voted yes. Naturally there is plenty of time for either or even both of these backlashes to happen. But I must admit the backlash that has already happened is something I never saw coming.

Scotland's new flag

Yes Scotland rally in Cardiff

Today saw the rally in support for an independent Scotland in Cardiff. There was also another rally in Cardiff last month. That one was for Dan Snow. The London born historian had organised a rag tag bunch of millionaires, most with letters from Betty after their name to sign a declaration that the Scots should not be sovereign. Today's rally was organised by 'Go for it Scotland', a grass roots movement of people from Wales.

There is a slight difference, you may have to squint to see it.

I caught a bus up to Cardiff that was organised by the 'Go for it Scotland' team. After sitting down the guy in front introduced himself, it was Cneifwr. Had a good chat on the way there about this and that.

When I got to Cardiff we parked opposite Plas Dahl. Had a quick chat with a Welsh girl who was hoping Scotland would vote no. We were stood at the lights waiting to cross and she saw my flags and started the conversation. It was a pleasant chat and the good thing is that people are talking about it.

September 13th is Roald Dahl's birthday so I wanted to pop over to take a picture of the plaque. It's by the footbridge at the sea end of Plas Dahl. Whilst there a young couple were also taking a pic so I told them it was his birthday today and they looked at me like I had three heads. Why take the picture if you don't care?
In fairness they did look a bit younger than me and probably didn't have a library next to their primary school that had every Dahl book.

From there I went across to the Senedd and was pleasantly surprised by the turn out. By the time the rally kicked off there must have been over 400* people there. Over 400* people in Wales got off their arse to attend a rally about politics. It's incredible.

I chatted with a guy from Breton, he had the accent and everything even though his name was Iestyn! He was over on holiday and stopped off on his way to Scotland. I joked that there'd be more tractors and things on fire if it was back in Breton.

There were a number of speakers, Pol Wong from Wrecsam spoke well, Joanna Lumley Pippa Bartoletti the Green Queen said lots of things about Scotland which she doesn't support happening in Wales, Amy Kitcher (who was a Yellow Tory until she saw the light) was very good. A few others whose names I can't remember and the headline act was, of course, Leanne Wood. Leanne spoke well, the highlight being that on September 18th the people of Scotland would be sovereign and will have the chance to decide whether they want to be sovereign everyday from then on or not.

It's a no brainer really. I took a number of pictures, you can see them all here. The event was also filmed by the organisers and can be viewed here.

*The 400 is a very conservative guess, I have no idea. I've seen all sorts of figures online from 500,600,  even 700+. Have a look at the pictures I took and make your own mind up.

Scumbag Labour - Prosiect Ffear

By now we're all pretty much up to speed with 'project fear', the self-titled scare tactics employed by the Better Together-No Thanks-UKOKs (or whatever they are called this week).

For those that are not up to speed it revolves around the following premise, rather than trying to put forward a coherant message of why Scotland should remain ruled from London the British Nationalists are simply resorting to scare stories. 'Scotland will be kicked out of the EU' whilst simultaneously being 'forced to use the Euro', 'won't be allowed to use the UK NHS' despite this actually never existing as they are all independent from each other and how about threatening to 'bomb Scottish airports' in the event of invasion despite the fact that the only country to invade Scotland in recent memory was England.

Above is just a few I've listed but it appears that project fear is now making its way to Wales. I've dubbed this 'prosiect ffear' so that we can differentiate between the two but it's basically the same premise just aimed at a Welsh audience.

See how many 'prosiect ffear' examples you can spot. Share via twitter | facebook

Quoted for truth - John Major

Originally covered by the Fails Online was this little gem from the former Prime Minister of the UK John Major. In which he starts off by stating he was opposed to devolution due to it leading to a break up of the UK. This isn't actually true, the need for devolution was brought about by the Council of Europe due to the UK's complete imbalance and constitutional deficiencies. This could have been addressed at any point since Wales was conquered and annexed, and Scotland was forced to sign itself over to England.

The option of devolution was forced upon the UK in order to give (some of) the Celtic nations more control over themselves than the British State would ever give them voluntarily. John Major saying he was opposed to it is a smoke screen because it didn't matter who was in charge of the UK at the time as it had to be offered.

John Major highlighting how rUK will look weak. Share to twitter | facebook

Scumbag Labour - Margaret Curran

Labour have a long history of offering us 'Jam Tomorrow', a never ending stream of false promises in order for us to do their dirty work for them. Leanne Wood was recently in Scotland giving a talk about 'Jam Tomorrow' so I guess it is only fitting for a RedTory MP from Scotland to then be given the full support of the EBC propaganda machine to be able to promise us here in Wales some more 'Jam Tomorrow'.

Curran using the EBC RedTory propaganda machine. Share via twitter | facebook

Better together?

YouGov were recently commissioned by gutter rag The Sun to poll people across the UK on a few different questions but the one that YouGov jumped on was that the people of Englandandwales were desperate to deny Scotland one of the most basic of all rights, the right of self determination.

In the poll, YouGov claim that 55% of adults in Englandandwales would, if given the choice, vote no to Scottish independence. In the graph below it does state that the % is of all UK adults, but even with Scotland taken out it's the same figure.

Poll from here

Quoted for truth - Jack Straw

Here's a couple of great quotes from nu-Labour stalwart Jack Straw. They are from 2006 but in many ways they are even more relevant now than they were back then. After all, back in 2006 Labour had a clean sweep of Governments in Wales, Scotland and UK. Now they only have Wales and with the Scottish referendum less than a year away they are facing self destruction.

So first up, here's Jack Straw outlining why England needs to hang on to the rest of us in order to keep up the pretence that they are still a world power.

Jack Straw outlining why England needs us. Share via twitter | facebook

Cake or Death?

An interesting article was published on the Welsh language version of the BBC news site. It doesn't appear to have found it's way onto the English language version which means it has effectively been buried. Thanks to google those who aren't Wesh speakers can have a fairly good translation of the page here. I have archived both pages just incase it should suddenly vanish.

The story revolves around an opinion given by Cardiff University's Proffessor Richard Scully who believes that if Scotland votes for independence then England would seek to cast the rest of us off.

I'll have the cake please. Share via twitter | facebook

Proud to be British? Where is our legacy?

October 14th 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the Senghenydd colliery disaster in which 439 men and boys died. The disaster came just 12 years after a similar explosion killed 81 of the 82 workers. The greed of the owners resulted in the second disaster. In a week it will also be the anniversary of Aberfan, when the negligence of the coal board saw 116 children and 28 adults murdered by an avalanche of wet slag. I use the term murdered for that is what the parents at the inquest shouted.

116 children and 28 adults 'buried alive by the national coal board'.

The majority of Britain is officially not British

What an incredible headline that is. Regular readers will remember the fantastic moment when the results from the 2011 census were released which proved catergorically that the majority of Wales was officially Welsh not British. Syniadau then showed that the majority of England was also not British. But now, after all this time the results of the Scottish census are out and the majority of Scotland is Scottish not British.

So that means that of the three nations on this rock the majority of us are not British. This is a complete and utter rejection of Britishness, a two fingered salute to a fast decaying empire.

What a joyous site, share via twitter | facebook

Caeredin / Edinburgh 2013

Edinburgh hosted the 2013 independence march and rally on Saturday 21st September. I was at home but it was great to see so many pictures of Welsh flags shared online amongst the assortment of flags from Scotland and other nations in attendance.

Here are some that I have collected from around the web, I have reduced the picture and file size in almost all cases but each has a credit link back to the original source, if you want to share any then please click through to the original and share that way.

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Côr dre via @menna

Video - The Great Debate

It will be no great surprise that Wales is decades behind Scotland when it comes to politics. But this video from 1995 shows clearly the gulf between the devolution Scotland was just about to receive and the devolution that Wales is still trying to achieve. Tax raising powers is probably the most obvious of these.

The debate betwen Alex Salmond and "Baron" Robertson also highlights the gulf between our nationalist party and Scotland's nationalist party. But before anyone in Plaid takes this as a slight it also shows the gulf between the SNP and Labour. The old cliché of "if this was a boxing match" is obvious from early in. And if I am to use another boxing reference it's a pleasure to watch Salmond in this old debate in much the same way that it's a pleasure to watch Muhammad Ali dance around his opponent, invite attacks before leaving them on the floor wondering what the hell just happened. I would recommend everyone watches this but at around 50 minutes not everyone will so I will mention some key moments below.

How balanced is Parliament?

After showing the imbalance of the UK population in this post I wanted to look at how MPs are balanced. I have looked at this before using pie charts but my new toy is pixel (px) art.

The UK has 650 MPs representing the four constituent countries of Wales, England, Scotland and N Ireland. I will use a 255 x 255 px square. This gives us 65,025 px which works out as a scale of 1 MP = 100 px. For consistancy I'll try and make the shapes as similar to how  I did them for the population square so that they can be easily compared.

Parliament (1 MP = 100 px)

Britain is not a country

I don't whether it's just lazy journalism, ignorance or deliberate propaganda but the media constantly uses the words Britain, UK and 'this country' interchangably. This is not only factually incorrect but when it is said enough times people start to think that it's true. It's used in everyday conversation which makes things even more confusing when the media handles things that are not devolved. We have to acknowledge that most people are politically ignorant due to their only source of information being lazy, ignorant or deliberately bad journalism.

So I created this little graphic to easily show the difference between the UK, Britain and "this country". Note that "this country" should only be used when referring to the country you are actually in. So whichever one of these countries you are in. Just imagine the words "this country" under it's name.

An easy to follow representation of the UK. Share via twitter | facebook

500 days to go

Today marks an important milestone, not just for Scotland but for Wales also. In 500 days time Scotland will have a referendum on freeing itself from the colonial relationship with the United Kingdom (sic). After almost 800 years of subjugation the most important event in Welsh history so far could happen around 400 miles away from our Senedd in a different country.

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If you tolerate this...

The Scotland on Sunday newspaper has, for some unknown reason, decided to photoshop a swastika onto a saltire and then use it as a front page photo. The original picture was taken as a homage to the iconic Iwo Jima photo. But this Tory owned BritNat propaganda rag has decided that people who want their country ruled by their own people are nazis.

Pic from the Scotland on Sunday. Share via twitter | facebook

80 minute patriots

The six nations is almost over for another year. The 80 minute patriots are about to use their fluffy pink cowboy hat one last time before returning to their default position of not caring about Wales, a region of the English empire that only exists to them for 80 minutes at a time sporadically throughout the year.

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Haawkwaard credit rating.

The Better Together campaign were left a little red faced recently when the UK lost it's AAA credit rating as it had printed and distributed thousands of leaflets making the following claim.

"Scots save billions on the cost of mortgages due to the UK's AAA credit rating".

Hindsight is 2020

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You may have heard of the EU 2020 targets. But for those that haven't they are the five ambitious objectives the 27 EU member states have set themselves.

In this article I want to look at one of those objectives, specifically the one that deals with climate change and energy. Something that is is a fairly contentious subject in Wales. Just mention wind farms to anyone and see how they react.

Climate change / energy

• Greenhouse gas emissions 20% (or even 30%, if the conditions are right) lower than 1990

• 20% of energy from renewables

• 20% increase in energy efficiency