Killer Whale kills trainer.

Since I grew up on a large sheep farm in the North of Scotland, I have been aware of the bad things we do to animals. Growing up close to nature gives you a unique understanding of all the wild things around us both animal and mineral and plants. I was always amazed by the power of nature, and also how nature could be beautiful one minute and then appear to be cruel the next. In winter we often saw the result of snowstorms that took the lives of wild animals. Down by the river below our house I often watched otters, and marvelled at their beauty and grace, until one day I found a Salmon with a big chunk missing behind it’s head, and it was explained to me that the Otter would only eat that bit of the Salmon. Then I realised that the Otter was performing in that way to feed it’s own young and survive. We also took Salmon and deer to feed our selves in winter. What it left me with wherever I travelled in the world was an understanding of the balance of nature and tremendous respect for it. It also angered me when I witnessed man's cruelty to wild animals, usually for financial gain, or to flatter their ego.

The shocking news today that a trainer in Florida was killed by a killer whale, whilst talking to an audience who had paid to see the whale perform tricks to entertain them left me with the same feeling. Sympathy for the lassie that was killed but revulsion for the mentality that thinks it is OK to cage wild animals and make them perform tricks to entertain fat lazy humans. These animals are usually coerced into these tricks by giving a reward when the trick is performed or more usually inflicting pain on the animal.

The clue is in the name of the animal. Killer Whale. It is the natural instinct of these animals to leap out of the water and take seals or other animals for food, of the beach; in the same way we fish for food. Whales are widely regarded as being very intelligent, I will go along with that, and further suggest that this poor trapped animal harboured resentment towards the person who it knew best, and that it saw it’s chance to kill and took it. I sincerely hope that this poor trapped animal is given it’s freedom, and that it is trained to survive in the wild ocean it does not know. Zoos and animal enclosures have no place in a civilised society and should be banned. Reservations are the way to preserve and maintain the populations we want to preserve, not bloody cages and chains.

SPT

Jenny Hjul and The Sunday Times have certainly gone up in my estimation with the exposure of the disgusting culture of entitlement going on at SPT, with Labours councillors doing what they do best. Gorging at the trough. What a disgrace they are. And what a picture this all paints, which has been largely put on the back pages of the Scottish media.

The grotesque spectacle of Murphy trying to lay this at the door of the SNP, shows us just what this political eunuch is made of. He is no more than a cheap shot, spiteful politician full of malice and hatred towards the SNP. Like so many of his breed.

When you look at what they were doing and read the story on the Renfrew Ferry, it really is quite shocking and lays bare all that is rotten in our local government. SNP councillors to their credit have been warning about this for some time. Alex Salmond now needs to step up to the plate and do what he is committed to doing and gutting the big fat fish of the QUANGOS. This has to be brought to an end.

Health boards are another example of this who seem to operate in a bubble out side of the laws of natural justice and reality.

The Herald and the Renfrew Ferry

Posted this on SNP Tactical Voting.


Compare the status in The Herald and the MSM of the "lunchgate" non story and the "Nicola letter," to that of Labour councillor Alasadair Watson resigning from SPT up to his neck in the expenses question on his watch, and his supping vigorously at the trough. When you consider the sums of money being used by SPT for these elite to travel the globe, and staying in the best hotels, supping the finest wines. To the fact that they preside over a region with the worst public transport infrastructure, with no plans to improve it. And then they axe the Renfrew Ferry, to save some money for more expenses and lavish junkets.

Where is the investigative journalism on this one?

For instance if they had spoken to the guys on the Renfrew Ferry crew, they may have discovered that they had put forward a plan to the SPT some years ago, which would have generated more traffic on the ferry. A plan that meant doing a triangular run between Braehead, Yoker and Renfrew. They also put forward a plan that included going up river to Glasgow as the now defunct Pride o The Clyde did. There were many ideas that could have increased revenue on this ferry. But these clowns were to busy gorging at the trough to be bothered with such things. Then in a final sickening blow to Alex Gilmour of the Waterbus they spent over £100,000 on a feasibility study on the prospect of putting more boats on the river. The Pride o The Clyde had been doing this for 6 years. But oh no, they had to go to Rotterdam and other far flung places to see how they did it.

There is a huge can of worms there being left to fester. The animosity felt in Glasgow councillors towards Braehead, due to them not being allowed to have Braehead under the Glasgow boundary umbrella and the subsequent loss of revenue that has created is behind most of these decisions. We now have a river with no waterbus and shortly no ferry for people to get from Yoker to Renfrew. Any other city would be glad to have this artery running into it’s centre, not Glasgow.

There is a massive story there, which ticks all the boxes. Greed, corruption, incompetence and indifference, and much more. But not one of the MSM journalists will lift the lid with an election round the corner

Beauly to Denny.

A map of the Beauly to Denny power line. Replacing the original, what is all the weeping and wailing about? It seems that Cairngorm National park ought to be breaking out the bunting.

Beauly will at least enjoy a tourist spin of this year after all the publicity.

Time share in Denny anyone?

Holywood magazine good news.

I have posted this as good news because at long last we are seeing the SNP nailing the lies and exposing Murphy for the nasty sneering anti Scottish Secretary, whos sole p[urpose in life like the rest of his corrupt party in Scotland is to undermine this nation. he will rue the day.
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Devolution dividend
Monday, 01 February 2010 15:04
On 25 January, the Scotland Office, under Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, published a paper purporting to represent a “Time Series Analysis of Government Expenditures and Revenues in Scotland”. It was given frontpage coverage in The Scotsman on that date.

This pro-Unionist propaganda paper was aimed at the SNP but it explicitly targeted, and demeaned, Scotland. It is nothing short of scandalous that taxpayers’ money should be utilised for that purpose.

The report claims that Scotland has had a £75.8bn “benefit” representing fiscal transfers from the rest of the UK to Scotland from 1999 to 2008; in other words, our tax proceeds fell short of what we were spending, yet no accurate figures are discernible. It asserts that “Scotland’s public finances exhibit a structural deficit, having not been in surplus since 1980-81”. It claims that, even the inclusion of all oil and gas revenues would leave a cumulative 1980-81 to 2007-08 deficit of £23.5bn.

However, the report falls at the first hurdle; in its introduction, reference is made to “estimates” from the GERS publication on which it is based. There are two major problems the authors have. First, it has been impossible to identify viable figures of Scotland’s tax take, for example, in GERS, so that raises questions about credibility. Secondly, any deficit has to be considered against the amount embedded in Scotland’s current block grant as a consequence of the extra money poured into Scotland in the postwar years, without budgetary justification, by respective Unionist parties in government at Westminster, to thwart the nationalist threat.

We have grounds to be sceptical about Mr Murphy’s agenda.

The Unionist parties are in some difficulty. The Barnett formula, introduced by the then Labour government in 1978, when we had a 22 per cent per head lead over England, was intended to cause convergence of the per-capita expenditure of Scotland and England. Had the Conservatives not put more in than the formula permitted, our lead would have fallen to single figures by 1997, instead of rising to 25 per cent. Had that not happened, our funding would not have been excessive and we would not have spent so much, thus making certain that we were in balance fiscally, and not operating on expenditure levels so far ahead of England – a cause of friction between the two countries.

The challenge for Labour is to produce an amended version of the report to exclude the additional funding referred to above; in other words, reducing our progressive block funding, pre- and post-devolution, to a level commensurate with England’s own per-capita spending. That would demonstrate the extent to which the Unionist parties caused the current situation to arise. We are where we are, but at least it would undermine the pernicious propaganda, which is one very good reason why we will not be seeing the truth of the matter.

In any event, the chickens will come home to roost when we move, as we certainly will, to a method of needs-based funding compatible with the requirements of all regions of the UK – an assessment by Professor David Bell in his article in The Scotsman on 8 December indicated that we could lose about £4.5bn of our resources. The irony is that the Unionist parties that put the extra money in in the first place will be the same that will be responsible for taking it out again! But they are on a hiding to nothing because their cherished Barnett formula, allowed to run on, will cause convergence, per capita, anyway!

One final thought: If Scotland is as dependent, as the paper claims, upon Social Protection Spending, then that is an indictment of Mr Murphy’s Labour government’s handling of the economy, which is largely reserved to Westminster, over the past thirteen years.

DOUGLAS MAYER