SPEW BOAK CORNER
Past Chief Jock Dumpling (now Media Minister) Ian Murray sent this message to Mandelson as he was made US Ambassador: "Congratulations your excellency. What a wonderful appointment. I'll look forward to seeing you state side in our Brand Scotland travels. Have a lovely Xmas. lan"
The Scottish independence movement did not build itself on corporate donations, billionaire backers or establishment privilege, it was built by ordinary people, pensioners putting coins in collection buckets, working families buying raffle tickets and attending fundraisers, activists standing in the rain shaking tins on street corners, young people skipping nights out to donate a few pounds to a cause they believed was bigger than themselves.
Hundreds of thousands of Scots placed their trust, their hope and their money into a movement that promised honesty, transparency and a nation built on democratic accountability.
That is why the guilty plea by Peter Murrell to embezzling £400,310 from the SNP is not just another political scandal, for many in the independence movement, it feels like a betrayal of faith itself.
This is not simply about one individual standing in court, it is about a movement demanding answers that should have been given long ago. The central question that still burns in the minds of independence supporters across Scotland is simple, was this money ordinary SNP party funding or was it the ring-fenced referendum fund that people across the wider independence movement donated to in good faith for the sole purpose of securing Scotland’s independence?
If it was referendum money, then this becomes something far deeper than internal party wrongdoing, it becomes the theft of hope from an entire national movement. For years, ordinary independence supporters were told that the referendum fund existed, that it was protected, that it was there for the day Scotland would once again be called upon to decide its future.
People donated believing they were investing in the freedom of their country, they were told their money was ring-fenced and safeguarded, now Scotland is faced with a guilty plea involving £400,310, and yet the original £600,000 referendum fund remains surrounded by unanswered questions, contradictions and silence. If the embezzled amount was part of that fund, then where is the remaining £199,690?
If it was not referendum money, then what exactly happened to the £600,000 that the wider independence movement entrusted to the SNP? These are not fringe questions, they are questions every independence supporter has the right to ask, the independence movement cannot move forward by pretending this does not matter.
Trust is the foundation of every political movement, especially one asking a nation to believe in a better future, once trust is broken, it cannot simply be rebuilt with slogans and staged speeches, it requires the truth to be brought out, it requires transparency and accountability without fear or favour.
The movement cannot spend years demanding honesty from Westminster while refusing to confront hard questions within its own ranks. Scotland deserves better than that and the independence movement deserves better than that.
There are many independence supporters today who feel angry, humiliated and used, not because they oppose independence but because they devoted years of their lives to a cause they believed belonged to the people of Scotland, not to political elites or party machines.
Some travelled the length of the country campaigning, some damaged friendships and family relationships defending the movement, some gave money they could barely afford because they genuinely believed they were helping secure Scotland’s future, those people deserve answers, they deserve respect, above all else, they deserve the truth.
On the 78th Anniversary of the Nakba – 15 May 2026
Seventy-eight years ago, Britain committed one of the most catastrophic acts of colonial injustice in modern history. With the stroke of a pen, the British government disposed of a land it had no right to give – uprooting an entire people from their homes, their soil, and their heritage to install a project built on displacement, exclusion, and dispossession.
The Nakba was no accident of war; it was a deliberate, calculated campaign of erasure. Hundreds of villages were demolished. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were driven from everything they had ever known.
Britain bears a historic and moral responsibility for this foundational crime – a responsibility it has never acknowledged, never atoned for, and never answered. Today, we name it plainly: what Britain inflicted upon the Palestinian people was a crime, and history will not allow it to be forgotten.
Yet, the crime did not end in 1948. The world’s governments, institutions, and international bodies chose complicity. For nearly eight decades, the international community has legitimised a regime built on stolen land, suppressed Palestinian resistance at every turn, and shielded Israel from accountability. They looked away – or actively enabled the oppressor – as war crime followed war crime.
The occupation deepened. Settlements expanded. The blockade tightened. The apartheid wall grew in length and height.
Now, before the eyes of the entire world, Gaza faces a genocide – a systematic campaign to destroy a people. Children are bombed in hospitals and schools. Families are starved by design as a weapon of war. An entire civilisation is being dismantled in real time. The collusion of world powers in this ongoing catastrophe does not merely dishonour them; it makes them active accomplices in every crime committed since the first.
And yet, Palestine endures. Through every massacre and siege, through expulsion, imprisonment, and collective punishment, through seventy-eight years of unrelenting assault on their very existence, the Palestinian people have never surrendered – and they never will.
Generation after generation has carried the flame: from those who fled with the keys to their homes in 1948, to the children of Gaza who today stand amidst the rubble and declare that they are still here. This is more than resilience; it is one of the most extraordinary acts of collective resistance in human history.
The Palestinian people have taught the world what it means to refuse to disappear. They will not be erased. They will not be silenced. And they will not rest until every inch of their land is free and every right is restored – fully, unconditionally, and without compromise.
The tide has turned, and the world knows it. The Zionist project, sustained for decades by propaganda, intimidation, and the suppression of truth, is losing its grip on the global conscience. Millions across every continent have taken to the streets. Students have risen on university campuses from London to Los Angeles. Artists, academics, lawyers, and doctors are raising their voices, and international courts have opened investigations.
The mask has been torn away, exposing the reality beneath: an apartheid regime, a colonial enterprise, and a system of terror and control that has no place in the modern world. The narrative that once protected Israel from scrutiny is collapsing. The impunity that shielded it from consequence is eroding. The end of the Zionist project as a viable political reality is no longer unthinkable; for the first time, it is inevitable.
On this 78th anniversary of the Nakba, the Global Alliance for Palestine makes this unshakeable pledge: we will not rest. We will not be silent. We will not be bought, intimidated, or deterred. We stand in full, unconditional solidarity with every campaign, movement, and act of resistance – legal, moral, cultural, and political – that advances the cause of Palestinian liberation anywhere on earth.
We will work without pause until the dream that has sustained an entire people across three generations becomes reality: a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Full rights, full dignity, and full justice will be restored to every Palestinian – those living under occupation, those displaced in the diaspora, and those who gave their lives so that others might one day be free. https://t.co/nUI3OpUTup
The Nakba is not history; it is an ongoing wound. And we will not stop until it is healed.
Global Alliance for Palestine
15 May 2026
“I spoke to my wife the Foreign Secretary” — how much longer do we have to put up with the insanity of Ed Balls — former Labour cabinet minister — “impartially” presenting the news, while also being married to Yvette Cooper?
It’s such a joke.
I hope this photo is a watershed moment.
Forced to carry on to the end of the race with a broken back.
Collapsed & died after the finish line.
RIP Gold Dancer.
If you’re making money off this kind of suffering - how do you look at yourself in the mirror?
Extracts from an interview done in later years with Nora Connolly O'Brien, daughter of James Connolly, she recalls how she and her mother Lillie visited him on the night before he was executed by the Crown Forces in May 1916 after the Easter Rising.
#Irishrepublican#irishhistory
America: bombing Iran, can't find Venezuela, thinks Iraq is still the war, and a bikini is the top concern.
The 'free world' can't locate Spain on a map but has strong opinions about who deserves freedom
@STVNews Would that honour be for being the woman who paid £12 million pounds to another woman who she had never met, to keep her paedophile son out of jail? Asking for all the victims of Epstein.
“Oil pipelines, gas pipelines going west through the Arabian Peninsula to Israel, right up to our Mediterranean ports, and you’ve just done away with the chokepoints forever.”
~ Netanyahu
The real reason for Middle East war. Oil & gas control.
On this day, Dec 23, 1920: Britain & France drew the borders of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, & Iraq. The modern Middle East was carved up for profit & strategic control by European capitalists in European capitals. The Yellow Line in Gaza is simply history repeating itself. A🧵
So the non-sweating prince who loves Pizza more than being honourable about himself including being an ermine wearing nonce got his mother to fork out £12m to that young lady who committed suicide and lives in a 30 bedroom estate at taxpayers expense- I’m sure if parliament is not so blind they will help Charlie to evict him and toe-sucking partner - Just saying 🤫✌️