Tommy Sheridan and freedom of speech

Tommy Sheridan is about to be released from the Castle Huntly open prison, on licence, after being found guilty of perjury by the Scottish courts and having served the amount of time he was legally obliged to do. Putting aside my severe doubts about whether he was guilty of the offence or not; considering that the 'News of the World's' employees (Bob Bird) were witnesses at his trial. Are those the same witnesses that are now being investigated for criminal activity and, if not lied in the current investigation, have almost certainly attempted to twist the truth beyond any form of moral recognition?

But, that is not what I want to say at this moment in time. What is an assault on the balance of justice is the court's possible attempt to place a gagging order on him and stop him from speaking or writing in public. The man is a politician and has always maintained that he was 'set up', not only by the 'News of the World' but also by his fellow Scottish Socialist Party members. Now, I'm not a great fan of his politics, but that is not the point. If he was a danger to the public at large then he should not be released. So why the gagging order? If he comes out and says something illegal during his licensed freedom then he can be taken to court for slander or libel but to stop him from making any proclamations seems to me to be a breach of his human rights.
There is something about this case which stinks of corruption and the attempted gagging order to be placed upon Mr. Sheridan seems to me to be an extension of that self same corruption in politics in Scotland. The sooner we get out of this UK backed 'establishment' the better it will be for justice in Scotland.

Update:

Sheridan released and up for it.

The Big Debate on the BBC

I have just watched the BBC's The Big Debate-Choosing Scotland's Future, many thanks to Monty for supplying the link. I was shocked, yes shocked, to see Glenn Campbell being unbiased in his role as the host. Long may that continue. I thought he handled it well and has my respect if not suspicion.

Glenn Campbell

The biggest surprise for me, after Glenn Campbell, was the points put forward by Lesley Riddoch. Being English born and spending her childhood in Northern Ireland I would have expected a staunch Unionist. I was totally wrong and that says more about myself than anything else. She put over her points wonderfully and stumped Jim Wallace, on more than one occasion, and handled herself wonderfully against Johann Lamont. I think she was more for the Devo-max option than full independence but, in my opinion, was definitely against the status quo. Good all round performance.

Lesley Riddoch

Where do I start with the Advocate General of Scotland, Jim Wallace? Not only did Lesley Riddoch leave him a shivering wreck with her probing questions but he fell to pieces with Nicola's remarks as well.  If this is all that the Unionists can put up against us the referendum is already won. It was an atrocious performance and I would have expected a lot better off him. He obviously thought that he could come on and waffle his way through it because he was the Advocate General and the people would listen to his words of wisdom and worship at the altar of his profound pronouncements; sorry Jim, it doesn't work that way. Even Johann Lamont had to come to his rescue.

Baron of Tankerness, Jim Wallace

A very good performance by Johann. I think she is a far better operator than her predecessor. She is obviously used to the rough and tumble of politics and that showed. She stood her ground and tried, but failed, in my humble opinion, to put forward her case. I suspect that she is being hampered by what her bosses in the Labour party want her to say. I suspect that once free of Westminster she could be a person to watch out for.

Johann Lamont

What can I say about the lovely Nicola. She never put a foot wrong. If only she was 15 years older I would consider marrying her ;-)

Nicola Sturgeon

On the whole I would say the the case for independence was won on this programme and, going by the applauses, so did the audience. I would have to congratulate the BBC in Scotland [someone pass me the sick bucket] for a well made and unbiased programme. I hope they continue to bring on guests like that.

BBC coverage of the First Minister's speech

I don't know whether you got a chance to see the First Minster's speech online at Edinburgh castle today. It was covered life by the BBC. The coverage was atrocious with there being constant 'technical' difficulties which broke up the flow of the speech and the questions which were asked afterwards. This is not the first time that the BBC have done this and I expect that it won't be the last. The question you have to ask yourself is: 'If this were the Prime Minister of the UK would these 'technical' difficulties happen?'. Then when you add what Subrosa was saying on her blog it begins to look suspicious. Now, I am more than willing to accept that I may be adding 1+1 and coming to 3 but I suspect not.
Add to that the Paxman interview on BBC and it becomes absolutely clear that the state broadcaster is deliberately trying to interfere in the Scottish government's decision to hold a referendum. Add to it the furore about the lack of comments. Brian Wilson's blog, 'Blether with Brian', writing so few articles about the political situation in Scotland and the disappearance of Newsweek Scotland then it must be no smoke without fire.

The cost of military equipment

Having read this article on the BBC about the theft of military equipment I was shocked to find out that night vision goggles are costing us £45,000 a pair. Why so expensive?

I remember being told during my training that army equipment needs to be 'soldier proof', meaning that it needs to be virtually indestructible. Of course this extra protection will cost more money but in doing a little bit of research online I found goggles averaged out at about $4,000. So why such a huge disparity?  I have spent the last 2 hours trying to find these goggles online but failed miserably. If anyone can recognise these glasses then tell me and I will update this.
Anyway, my father always told me that in the army if it wasn't nailed down it was stolen.

One trillion pounds in debt

Figures released today show that the government of the UK is one trillion pounds in debt and rising by approximately 14 billion a month or to put it another way 144 billion a year or nearly 1/7 of a trillion a year. The interest itself would keep Scotland going for a while. The BBC managed to pull on this person who seemed very optimistic because the government had got the borrowing down. Sorry, but in my books getting your borrowing down is still adding to the debt; it is nothing to shout about.

We are not going to see this for a while

So to start shaving money off what we owe we have to cut our spending by 1/7 of a trillion a year plus the interest that we owe of the trillion debt. So, let's take a figure of 5% [it isn't, I'm just using this figure] which equates to an extra 7.2 billion or, to put it into English, we have to shave off over £151 billion. Now no government is going to do that in one year so they will hope to spread it over the lifetime of their parliament which means over 30-40 billion a year needs to be shaved off our current spending.
The cuts, so far, have hardly taken effect. It is going to get worse, very worse. We cannot do as Labour have said which is to stimulate the economy because the Eurozone is going through a rough time and they are going to have to cut back. 60% of our exports are to the Eurozone countries so stimulating growth is only going to suck in more imports and we will not be in a position to export, to counter the imports, because nobody is buying just now in the quantity that we need to balance the import/export books. Tighten your belts because there are going to be more people on the dole and the dole money, along with all public spending being cut, is going to have to be hit as well. The poor, as usual, are in for a hard time.

Labour's hypocrisy over pensions

It emerged today that the Labour leader, Ed Milliband, who has attacked the UK government's attempt to link state pensions from the current RPI [retail price index] to the lower inflation linked CPI [consumer prices index] which would save the UK treasury £7.5 billion a year to 2015, yet he has saved the Labour party nearly £4.5 million by linking its own workers' pensions to the CPI.

What's he got to laugh about? Oh, yes. He has saved his party £4.5 million by trampling over its own workers.

So why aren't the Unions, who back Labour, out in force to protect the pension rights of the workers from the Labour party? They did it against the ConDems. Or was this just political posturing on the Unions part and also on the Labour party's part too? The hypocrisy of this party and its backers knows no bounds.

The BBC is not all bad

There was a really interesting documentary on BBC 4 called Unnatural histories. It was all about the history of the Amazon and the effects that the indigenous peoples [pre-European involvement] have had on the so-called primeval forest. It was an eye-opener. To give a quick summary of the programme it states that, prior to the Europeans arriving there were abundant advanced civilisations living there. When, one of the first Spanish explorers, Fransisco de Orellana,  arrived he wrote in his diary that the Amazon river was crowded with towns and cities [yes, cities] on its banks all the way along its length.

Fransisco de Orellana

It wasn't until the Europeans arrived with their diseases, which wiped out an estimated 90% of the indigenous populations, that the advanced civilisations of the Amazon Basin disappeared and nature took over the vast cities there, which is why we think we see untouched, pristine forest. But even that is not entirely true as the hunter gatherers of today were/are managing the forests. The BBC explains it better than I.

Which brings me back to the headline: 'The BBC is not all bad'. This is where the BBC are wonderful in their science and natural history programmes. I think that I can safely say that if there was an Olympic prize for these types of TV programmes then the BBC would certainly be in the medals.