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Blair McDougall Profile picture
Blair McDougall
@blairmcdougall
Strategist in UK & around the world. Labour. Ran indyref campaign to keep UK united. Subscribe to NoN newsletter below. Chair @uyghurstop See @keirhardiequote
Apr 7 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
30 years ago the Rwandan genocide began. It’s important to remember that it was deliberate, not spontaneous and that the outside world was complicit, not powerless. A thread… 1/ The murder of around a million people in Rwanda wasn’t ‘ancient tribal hatred’ or spontaneous violence in response to the downing of the Presidents plane. It was extraordinarily efficient, deliberately planned, mass murder. As Phillip Gourevitch puts it. 2/ Image
Aug 23, 2023 • 12 tweets • 1 min read
A few totally random thoughts on the SNP and independence... 🧵 The SNP propagate The Vow as their convenient excuse because they can't admit the reality that they lost the core economic argument.
Mar 16, 2023 • 28 tweets • 6 min read
"Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!" "Crackerjack" "Boom shaka laka " "THUNDERCLAP!" " A thread from simpler times when the SNP membership numbers weren't so secret. In fact they gave almost hourly updates. 1/loads.
Oct 17, 2022 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
Thread on the SNP plan for Scexit. Confirms years of Sterlingisation without the protections of a real central bank. This line means that without those protections and powers a tighter fiscal regime is needed. Will be interesting to see how a country with a structural deficit of £16bn will create these reserves and what size of reserves are necessary in absence of a real central bank.
Oct 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🧵accompanying Notes on Nationalism sent to subscribers last night. Sturgeon and Swinney will tomorrow announce plans to leave our currency union. Here they are on why that policy is against Scotland's interests on things like our mortgages... 1/4 notesonnationalism.com/p/video-specia… ...why it "makes no sense" to ask companies who want to trade between Scotland and England to change currencies... 2/4
Oct 9, 2022 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
The head of the SNP’s independence campaign says I’m misrepresenting his book. So let’s take a look inside shall we…? 1/ First he’s all about shrinking the state: 2/
Oct 9, 2022 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
New edition of Notes on Nationalism arriving into inboxes shortly. It sets the scene for a week when the SNP set out a new currency policy. To whet your appetite, a 🧵on how Nicola Sturgeon is about to offer us something she knows is bad for Scotland. In her own words...1/ A separate currency is against our best interests:
“An independent Scotland will keep the pound because it is in everyone’s best interests, and to try and suggest otherwise flies in the face of the facts.” 2/ web.archive.org/web/2014081310…
Oct 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Big this. On the day Sturgeon promises a new document on the economics of Scexit, her Minister for Business makes it clear that SNP position is that Scotland won't pay for pensions. Look at quotes. He is unequivocal here... 1/4 McKee "People who paid into the UK pot for their state pension would receive that money back from the UK pot."
Questioner: "But the SNP position remains that those pensions should be paid for out of the settlement as part of UK taxation rather than Scottish?"
McKee: "Sure." 2/4
Aug 18, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
🧵 We are currently in one of those biannual moments where the deep problems of the nationalist movement, and the SNP specifically, are discussed. As before the FM and leaders of her party express shock as if the aggressive abusiveness on display is a surpise. This is a lie. 1/ My party endured an agonising internal fight to expel those with unacceptable views, lead by politicians and individual members. There appears to be no such effort within the SNP so it falls to political opponents to embarrass them into action by focussing on individual cases. 2/
Jun 24, 2022 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
A thread on the SNP's history of covering up rather than confronting alleged bad behaviour in their ranks. 1/ 2008: Information about Bill Walker’s violence towards his ex-wives is given to Nicola Sturgeon’s office and to SNP HQ. Walker is still selected and then elected as an SNP MSP. Information is kept from public until 2012. 2/
heraldscotland.com/news/13055207.…
Apr 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
The papers this morning report that the SNP member who posted about me being hung from a lamp post has been suspended. Good. Now that they've set the precedent that it's wrong to talk about the execution of your opponents (a low bar, I know) let's test if they mean it... 1/ Below are five other self-declared SNP members who have posted about the execution of their opponents by hanging. I will share the details of each member on request to @PeterMurrell @NicolaSturgeon 2/
Feb 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In the conversation below @MichelleThomson goes out to bat for the bonkers new pension policy. In fairness to her, she's the only SNP parliamentarian to do so. Here's the problem for her though... 1/ She doesn't really believe that the then foreign state of the rest of the UK would fund our pensions. She was very clear that a separate Scottish state would be responsible for the obligation to honour NI contributions. 2/
Feb 13, 2022 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
🧵The other day Sturgeon said it was always her position that we wouldn't pay for pension entitlements accrued before leaving the UK. She asked us to go back & check. I shared this clip proving that wasn't true. I've been sent other examples by subscribers to my newsletter... 1/ First, another clip of Sturgeon making it clear it was for Scotland to meet the costs associated with past NI payments. Nationalists may wish to look away as she even quotes GERS to prove that we can afford to pay. 2/
Dec 5, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
It's interesting that the Herald is reporting on the fact that the SNP's independence campaign manager supports the wholesale privatisation of the NHS but ... 1/ heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/… ...the NHS was just part of the manifesto set out in that book. To quote: “Everything in this book is predicated on the need to reduce government to a size & scope which is affordable and which no longer constricts citizens in their daily live whilst limiting their potential.” 2/
May 13, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A couple of people have asked me to share the five short videos from the latest Notes on Nationalism notesonnationalism.substack.com/p/except-for-v… on here. So here goes...
First: We should be governed by us, not them. 1/5 Second: Taking control. 2/5
Apr 7, 2021 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Today is the anniversary of the start of the Rwandan Genocide. I’m more convinced than ever that we haven’t the learned any lessons about preventing the deliberate destruction of a people. What to do about that? Start with remembering and understanding. 1/ Comparing genocides makes little sense, but it’s important you understand that, contrary the lazy assumption that this was somehow a ‘primitive’ mass killing, that this was carefull organised and orchestrated project. Read this. 2/
Feb 5, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
When you notice something big a few minutes after you press send on your newsletter...The SNP are now going after the individual LSE academic's reputations. So a quick thread with a hell of a twist. 1/ One of them is Thomas Sampson. As well as the research on the impact of a Scotland-rUK border, earlier in the research series he also co-wrote this paper on the impact of Brexit. eprints.lse.ac.uk/66144/1/__lse.… 2/
Oct 20, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Yet another SNP MSP is pretending to believe (God I hope he’s pretending) that leaving the UK is like retiring to Benidorm & that the rest of the UK will pay for our pensions. The idea is that we won’t have to pay for the single largest item of public spending. So, a thread. 1/8 Firstly, pensions are paid for from existing taxes not previous payments. 2/8
Jun 10, 2020 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
A report has suggested today that half of coronavirus deaths could have been prevented had we locked down earlier. The Scottish Government are now suggesting they were prevented from locking down earlier. This is rewriting of history to avoid accountability. A thread... 1/ Throughout the outbreak the SNP government have taken near identical decisions to the Tories. For starters, remember that terrible press conference when Johnson went on about how he was still shaking hands? Here’s Scotland’s health minister on the same day. 2/
May 27, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Worth going back to the start of the Edinburgh outbreak story. The First Minister was very clear that she chose not to tell the public about the outbreak at a Nike conference because all contact tracing was done. Two weeks later, what do we know? 1/ We know that tour guides hired by the conference were not contacted. 2/
Apr 7, 2020 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
I know everyone’s minds are on other things, but today is the anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide. Sharing this thread with the hope it makes more people think about or responsibilities to prevent genocide. 1/ Firstly, the killing of around a million people in Rwanda wasn’t ‘ancient tribal hatred’ or spontaneous violence in response to the downing of the Presidents plane. It wasn’t ‘just something Africans do’ it was efficient, planned mass murder. As Phillip Gourevitch puts it. 2/