A blog by Al Harron which discusses Scottish independence, politics, culture, history and other subjects. Occasionally dinosaurs, art. Justice for Alex Salmond.
Nov 9 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I've lost friends over holding to my principles. I wish I could say it gave me strength, or that I could shrug it off, shake the dust from my sandals, & move on. But it doesn't make the loss any less painful.
It's one thing when it's a genuine divergence of worldview. My best friend from college thought Scottish independence was dangerous & hateful. It was anathema to him that I could be part of the movement. I still care about him, even if I haven't seen him in a decade.
Oct 15 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I think what's keeping me going is that I'm not alone in the raw grief I feel, even if there's so much that isn't yet publically known. I know that there are folk who will risk their reputations & their friends when principle are tested. These folk are precious as diamonds to me.
They could have kept their heids doon, stayed silent. They could have joined the chorus for self-preservation. But they stood by he who gave it all for what he believed.
Some may wonder why I feel this way about a politician. It's simple: he was so much more than that.
Jul 20 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Yesterday was Joannie's funeral. I was working on a tribute project, & looked through my photo library. I look through bittersweet tears at pictures of her on campaign, knowing now that for the last few years of her life, she was campaigning for a sunrise she would never see.
I saw her walking at the front of the Women for Indy banner at the big 100k Glasgow march; at other marches in Ayr & Edinburgh & elsewhere in Scotland. I saw her stand proudly with the candidates for the 2015 & 2016 elections who she folded letters & delivered leaflets for.
Oct 20, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
So.
If Scotland isn't a colony (yet another nation's MPs can always outvote them in the UK parliament parliament)
&
It isn't a country (yet has different laws, healthcare, education, sports teams etc from rUK)
Then
What *is* Scotland?
Seriously, what the hell is Scotland?
If it's a region of the UK like Yorkshire, then how come Yorkshire doesn't have its own NHS/education/laws?
If it's a former nation like Mercia, then why doesn't Mercia have a national football team?
If it's an equal partner in the UK then how is it always outvoted?
Mar 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The key thing about threads like this is understanding how quickly things can change in politics. Even the most optimistic outlooks in 2015 thought 56/59 SNP MPs less than a year after losing an indyref would be fantastical.
I've come to realise that we simply cannot rely on *any* political party to get us there. Not the SNP, not Alba, not even a Damascene pro-indy Labour. What we need is something that a party cannot control, & so, cannot resist.
Mar 13, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Part of the fun of #65 is trying to figure out what on Earth the creatures were meant to be. There are obvious analogues for Tyrannosaurs, Dromaeosaurs, & Caenagnathoids, & an actually pretty decent Dsungaripterus, but my speculative evolution brain was flummoxed by some.
Like these things: they're more like gracile crocodylomorphs such as Saltoposuchus, albeit larger (& being very late survivals from the Triassic)
Feb 20, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Can't sleep.
There's no point me talking about the SNP leadership race because too many people simply don't know the full story. Even the fraction I know is enough for me to be at odds with a huge section of the population. Any comments I could make would be incomplete.
If I give my recommendation, that would be used as fuel to promote the others, because some indy supporters have convinced themselves that a good number of the people they campaigned with in the passed have either lost their senses, or were Unionists all along.
Feb 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Still not watching Picard, but I note there's something uncomfortable about comparing Seven's discomfort being called Annika Hansen to "dead naming."
Seven was abducted, violated, & assigned a dehumanising designation - a number - with her autonomy & individuality removed.
Seven retaining her Borg designation in Voyager is part of her journey to the reclamation of her humanity, which was taken from her against her will. To continue to retain it even as she looks, acts, & feels human seems to have the whole thing backwards.
Apr 14, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
If it's such a brilliant Unionist ploy, the BBC & STV would be inviting Alba to their debates like they did with UKIP in 2016 with *1%* of the list vote. Instead, Alba's been bombarded with ad hominems & smears from all across the MSM. Odd tactics for defenders of the UK.
I haven't written a single blog post since my Alba announcement, because I wanted to give the SNP a chance to respond as they did to Rise in 2016. Instead, we're being treated as bigots, ethnic nationalists, conservatives...
Just like SNP were treated by Unionists before 2014.
Apr 12, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This is beneath The Ferret. At no point does the fact-check actually engage with Campbell's arguments, just falsely stating that "no evidence was provided."
Good intentions are meaningless if the document is poorly written. I supported the OBFA & Named Person laws.
I watched in horror as those good ideas were destroyed because of one or two badly-written or implemented sections. The SNP, for reasons I'll never understand, allowed those laws to fail rather than alter them sufficiently to survive being voted down.
Apr 11, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I am getting thoroughly sick of people spuriously accusing others of being far right when the actual far right is running riot over our collective freedoms, & that goes for fellow independence supporters too. I am not putting up with it.
You have no idea how furious I am to agree with Robin McAlpine on this. Centrism is the Golden Mean Fallacy made manifest in politics: if one party says the sky's blue & the other says it's red, the centre concludes that the sky must clearly be purple. sourcenews.scot/robin-mcalpine…
I mean *God almighty*, what a ridiculous, completely avoidable mess we find ourselves in, because some folk from the Dunning-Kruger Academy for Politics presume themselves to know better, then proceed to take exactly the wrong lessons from their predictable failures.
Oct 13, 2019 • 35 tweets • 6 min read
Got to get this off my chest before I go to bed: I'm frustrated, but also heartened, by today's events.
So first of all, yes, I an *immensely* frustrated with the SNP's "Plan A" approach. It reminds me of nothing so much as the currency issue in 2014: it may have been right & vindicated after the vote, but there's precious little solace in being right after a No vote.
Sep 3, 2019 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
Seriously at the end of my tether.
The UK Parliament is working precisely as intended. All the people who want to change things are tied up in red tape & meaningless tangents, & the folk who want to change things for the worse are reclining on the benches like smug teens.
The vast majority leading the vanguard against the "coup" just want things to go back to the way they were, as if the way things were was somehow not an affront to democracy in itself.
I understand why the SNP are playing along, but it's getting to the point I just can't watch.
