catherine maclean

[Jim Graham 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @trapdoorcat]

Not surprising that the nuclear dump has been suggested for Cumbria. Westminster would never position this any further south. If there was to be an accident or act of war in Cumbria the prevailing winds would poison the massive population of central Scotland. 💥ARE YOU YES YET💥

[THE DAILY REBUTTAL TEAM @MaureenFairgri1]

Do other UK countries share them or just pick up the tab?

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

The number of UK enablers of tax avoidance schemes up by 34%.

HMRC failed to collect £59bn last year, £500bn since 2010.

5 enablers prosecuted in 2023-24.

2025: One firm charged with failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion, result awaited.
https://t.co/8hgVvZgge3

[Angry Pict @SymbolStones]

Scotland's Seabed: The Question Crown Estate Scotland Wouldn’t Answer

Crown Estate Scotland manages the leasing of Scotland's seabed: offshore wind, subsea cables, data infrastructure and other major projects.

Salvo asked a very simple question:

What is the constitutional basis of that authority?

Six simple questions were put to Crown Estate Scotland. Among them:

Which Crown does CES understand itself to be acting under when leasing Scotland's seabed?

What is the source of the authority under which interests in Crown territory can be granted?

Does CES accept that it is a statutory administrator rather than itself the sovereign holder of that territory?

CES didn't answer those questions.

Instead, it said they "do not appear to seek recorded information" and classified them as requests for "a position statement, legal reasoning, legal concessions and/or explanations and opinions."

That distinction matters.

This was no substantive answer, not even a "no".

Instead the response was a procedural refusal to answer the question as framed, a prevarication.

And that question isn't abstract.

In the Scottish constitutional tradition, "the Crown" isn't simply another name for the state. The Scottish Crown had its own constitutional character and relationship to the Community of the Realm. So when a public body exercises authority over something as fundamental as Scotland's seabed, asking under what Crown authority it acts, and where that authority is recorded, is a real constitutional question.

If that chain of authority is straightforward, there should be a straightforward documentary trail.

That is why CES's response is interesting.

It doesn't immediately prove that Salvo's wider constitutional argument is correct. One FOI refusal can't establish ownership of the seabed or resolve the constitutional status of the Crown.

However, it does suggest that the reality may not be as simple as we are continually told by the Anglo-British state and its supporters.

If there is a single, constitutionally unproblematic "British Crown" exercising an equally straightforward title over Scotland's seabed, identifying the recorded basis for that proposition shouldn't be difficult.

If, on the other hand, constitutional history has left an unresolved relationship between the Scottish Crown, the British state and Scottish territorial rights, the reluctance to engage with the question becomes considerably more interesting.

That isn't yet proof of the latter. But it is precisely why the documentary trail matters.

So the refusal to answer the question shouldn't be ignored.

The recorded fact is this:

A public body administering Scotland's seabed was asked to identify the constitutional basis of that authority and chose not to provide a substantive answer, instead treating the questions as requests for legal opinion.

Salvo has now submitted a narrower FOI specifically seeking the recorded information behind that authority.

That is the important next step.

If the constitutional and legal basis is as straightforward as routine administration suggests, the narrowed request should reveal the documentary chain.

If it doesn't, the question becomes considerably more interesting, and potentially damaging for the Anglo-British state.

We'll see what comes back.

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

Israel cause more than 10 children per day lose a limb; at least 21,000 children have been disabled and around 44,000 children have suffered “new war-related injuries.”

Gaza now has the largest number of child amputees in history—a generation without limbs made by Israel.

[Rik Ferguson @rik_big]

It's about time we stopped England using Scotland's credit card...

[Republican @RepublicanSons]

Who wants to tell him about Ireland?

[Steve - Marquis of Malmesbury @bilbo815]

Drugs flooding up from England and Westminster looks the other way as they privately snigger that Scotland has the highest drug deaths in Europe

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Medical sources in Gaza say at least 73,420 Palestinians have been killed and 174,369 wounded since Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave began in October 2023, reported Wafa.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/jJ5YaErx3M

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

Holy shit. A THOUSAND TRADES A MONTH.
50 trades per day. This is a TEAM.

He hired professional traders to use inside information to make money for him on the stock market while he uses every lever in the federal toolkit to pump up equity prices.

Staggering organized crime.

[Talking-up Scotland @ProfJWR]

Scots fought in greater numbers against fascism in Spain than any other nation including Ireland https://t.co/w7F7UZg6Oz

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

"Former British and French diplomats urge action over Israel’s ‘erasure’ of Palestine. In letter to Macron and Burnham, more than 100 senior figures accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing and call for measures including trade ban"

https://t.co/CllU8jwHbU

[Itsmasel @Itsmasel2]

Why if we're all better together in the UK, if Scotland is an equal partner in the UK is it ok for Chinese companies to do business in England, but it's too dangerous to let Chinese comps do business in Scotland? the UK either lets Chinese comps in the UK or they don't

[Pat Byrne - Glasgow West End @glasgowswestend]

London-based landowner is putting the iconic Glenelg to Skye ferry at risk. Support the local community - not millionaire financiers - and save the world famous Glenelg to Skye ferry by joining me and signing the petition today: https://t.co/pgiIqiEiGQ via @38degrees

[Gordy @1965Muzzy]

Labour spent 10 years & £2.5 million on fighting the GCC workers equal pay dispute.
Now according to them & their lap dog unions it is all the fault of the SNP that there are to redundancies while trying to make the relevant reparations to what they caused.
Necks of solid brass!

[James Dewar @IndigoFast]

In terms if numbers (of people)
I will tell you who receives the highest UK public spending
Colonial homeland admin centre - Greater London

Almost twice as many people benefit from high levels of public spending as Scotland entire population

🤷‍♂️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Scunnert, Grannies for Independence @Scunnert2]

There is a government plane which flies Westminster politicians & the royals all over the world & that includes attending international sports events, why are the FMs of Scotland, Wales & NI not given access to it when promoting their own countries?

[Gerry Braiden @BraidenGB]

A perennial which is never supported by the facts. Most recent figures show about 9k more folk coming into Scotland from rUK than out of Scotland to rUK. And that's the consistent trend over many years.

[Scottish. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @ProudScot1]

Amazon just paid the Irish government 17 billion pounds in taxes.
Amazon pay no taxes to the Scottish government.
Amazon pay their taxes to the UK government.
Better together they tell us.

[EuropeanPowell @EuropeanPowell]

Reminder
Jeffrey Epstein in an email to Peter Thiel wrote -
‘Brexit, just the beginning’