It's all kicked off on George "Freedum" Square, with the bam faction of the Indy movement packing a couple of benches.
I think it was the promise of MORE speakers than the advertised 12 that brought so many out.
Can't believe so few turned out to see this riveting group of bams, SWiPs , transphobes and has beens though.
A friend on the square has counted 73 at ten mins in.
Twenty minutes in and the crowd has swollen, but all of them are hiding behind the monument.
Half an hour in and someone else has turned up.
Over three quarters of an hour in, and the huge crowd seems to be mostly out of shot.
An hour in and the crowd is swelling. Well, their ankles probably are.
An hour and a quarter in, and the bam wing of indy is enthralled by speaker after speaker saying things loudly.
An hour and a half in, and the pigeons have left...
Bammockburn Rising...
Two hours in and the latecomers seem to have been waylaid by a box set and a bag of chips somewhere...
Two and a quarter hours, and SWP paper sales are dreadful, and the bucket is rattling a little...
This really is like watching Alba Rising like someone with a slipped disc.
"Are we the baddies?" None of them thought, ever.
"No... it was the trains/weather/everyone is exhausted after yesterday/thousands watched it online..."
2 hrs 30 mins in and credit must go to those who have stayed this long.
Three full hours for some of these people. They may be few, but their senses are dulled enough to get through 12+ onstage bammery . 👏
The pigeons have come back. They sense "the end is nigh."
I think this is going to be the last. Look, I know as soon as we stop watching, thousands will turn up. But I need to turn my attention to interesting stuff, like watching grass grow, or kettles boiling.
OK... this is definitely the last. Wanted to check how many SWP paper sellers would stay in the rain. Looking like it is JUST those competitive cult kids left.
I think we can squeeze out one more paper, get Tahmee on again!
And it's all over until next year. Unless Sheridan, Findlay etc find some new excuse to rattle buckets, platform transphobes and rape apologists and misogynists and convicted liars...
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Labour MPs. Do not vote to cut the winter payment.
We'll be watching Scottish Labour- Who turns up and who votes or abstains to make Scotland a colder place for our vulnerable pensioners.
@ianmurraymp @D_G_Alexander
@kirstyjmcneill writetothem.com
Which @ScottishLabour MP's will vote or abstain to make Scotland a colder place for pensioners on Tuesday? @DrScottArthur
@RichardBakerMP @JohannaBaxter @MaureenBurkeMP @lucydahlia @Torcuil @GraemeDownieMP @PJFerguson18 @alangemmell @tracygilbert72 @johnadgrady @lillianjonesmp
Which @ScottishLabour MP's will vote or abstain to make Scotland a colder place for pensioners on Tuesday? @chriswkane @BrianLeishmanMP @Labour_Douglas @martinmccluskey @blairmcdougall @GordonMcKeeMP @FJMcNally @ChrisMurrayMP @katrinamurray71 @pamela_nash @gregorpoynton
It's been interesting watching some quite popular left Twitter accounts and some comrades shift in two ways. Way 1- relief at the end of the tories, but organising to fill the vacuum left by a right leaning Labour party or way 2- a kind of capitulation to the beige Brownist/
Blairist nuLabourism. In the second way, I see people who have seen the destruction the tories have meted out over 14 years who are feeling a kind of relief, some of whom seem to be either suffering a kind of Stockholm syndrome as they see no escape from the relentless propaganda
of the liberal left (this happened with many between 1997-2001) or some who weren't that personally effected by the Tory attacks on the working class/most vulnerable people in our society, so are cherry-picking out positives that bolster the propaganda of the profit promoting
Holyrude magazine accepts sponsorship from the ecological catastrophic salmon farming industry; Coca Cola, who as a corporation have been implicated in the murder of Trades unionists in Columbia, and directly profiting from tge apartheid of Israel's occupation Palestine; & US
military (who are engaged in bombing Yemen, for example, and have provided support for Israel during tgeir opperations reulting in genocide in Palestine) tech providers, Leidos; and another company that has been accused of greenwashing. All of these companies get free
some to promote their interests in the magazine.
How can we trust Holyrood magazine to be anything other than a lobby magazine (as it is given free to MSPs?)
Condolences to the friends & family of Allan Armstrong of the Republican Communist Network , Emancipation & Liberation, a founding member of @The_SSP_ & @RIC_Scotland. He was a tireless fighter for socialism & an indefatigable Trades Unionist in the @EISUnion & Scottish
Rank & File Teachers & the Scottish Socialist Teachers Federation. Allan was also the chair of the Lothian Anti-Poll Tax Federation. He has been involved in many campaigns, including the Radical Independence Campaign. He is also the author of two
books, From Davitt to Connolly & The Ghost of James Connolly & many articles.
He was a good man who lived his life to help others.
We are launching a non-party campaign in Rutherglen & Hamilton West highlighting Labour's policies that have indebted our councils (and will for years) and their support for Tory policy/ Brexit etc.
If you'd like to help with funds, check our profile for paypal/kofi. Message us
if you can leaflet or will write to press/articles for us re Labour support for two child cap/bedroom tax/ privatisation/ ppp/pfi etc etc.
Labour are a Westminster First party. Scotland -Rutherglen and Hamilton West -
deserve representation that puts all of us and not bankers, corporations and billionaires first.
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself..."
"...Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was
well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in
truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest