Dundee born, adopted Highlander Strongly support Scottish Independence. Scotland A Country NOT a County #Rebellion #Dissent
Inverness, Scotland
Joined December 2009
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Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Like Susan I am deeply pissed off with Holly Bruce’s viciously cynical attempt to use cancer patients as ammunition for her insane cause. I was bald. Still a woman. Will always be a woman. Hair or no hair.
Deepest shame on Holly Bruce.
Holly Bruce came armed with accusations. Susan Smith came armed with lived experience.
Bruce suggested that defending women's single-sex spaces puts masculine lesbians, women with alopecia and cancer patients at risk of being challenged over whether they look female enough.
What she apparently hadn't reckoned with was that Susan Smith, of For Women Scotland, is herself a cancer survivor who lost her hair during treatment.
Susan wasn't having it.
There's something deeply patronising about suggesting that a woman somehow becomes less recognisably female because she's bald, wears men's clothing or doesn't conform to feminine stereotypes.
And Susan exposed the contradiction. Women have fought for generations against being defined by how they look. Now they're being told that recognising biological sex somehow threatens those very women.
One woman was arguing about appearances. The other was defending the principle that women are women, regardless of appearance.
The point Susan makes is devastatingly simple: a woman doesn't cease to be a woman because she's bald, masculine or doesn't conform to someone's idea of femininity.
Protecting women's spaces doesn't require policing how women look. It requires recognising that sex matters.
Watch Susan put the record straight.
@ForWomenScot
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Hey America, I don’t mean to brag or anything but our skies are safe and we don’t have a fucking plumber in charge of our national security.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Yes, this.
It's really hard as a woman to lose your hair. Not, necessarily, the stuff on the top of your head, but the eyebrows & eyelashes that define a face.
And, for many of us, our breasts - that may have nurtured children - are removed. Mastectomies cause pain or dumbness in a part of our body that was once so electrified with feeling.
So for an MSP to say that boobless, hairless women are going to be picked out in changing rooms is disgusting. Because it isn't true! Women know.
The so-called reports we have seen are from hardened TRAs. The cynical aim is to co-opt vulnerable cancer survivors by making them afraid. And that is revolting.
Women with no hair are women. Here's one Susan took (years) earlier.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Little wonder John Swinney won’t talk to @ForWomenScot. Instead he cowers and panders to nonentities like Holly Bruce and Kate Nevens and the growing band of student activists infecting @ScotParl. The big question is Why?
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
"The law shouldn't be a game of 'my bank account is bigger and I'll drown you in debt.'" - Alex Tiffin
The reality however, as I know only too well, is that this IS exactly how the law operates in practice, especially when it relates directly to the most powerful people in the land.
In my own case, where I was maliciously and falsely accused of making threats against highly paid, powerful individuals close to the now discredited Nicola Sturgeon, the self-styled justice system became a powerful arm of political elites who sought to jail me for no other reason than the fact that I was deemed to be a political enemy. It remains a clear abuse of power.
Earlier this year Lord Lake ruled that "viewed objectively there were no reasonable or probable grounds for bringing the prosecution" against me. The Crown (Scotland's prosecution service) and Police admission that they had "ulterior motive" was, according to Lord Lake, "indicative of malice".
But, as Scots law stands today, the Crown has absolute immunity from claims of malicious prosecution such as mine.
In June the Inner House of the Court of Session upheld that position, basically declaring to the people of Scotland that the presumption that the Crown acts impartially is final and absolute and beyond question. The Crown are literally untouchable and so too are those political figures who directly influence them.
Although I was fully acquitted with the Court ruling there was "no case to answer" I still do not officially know the identity of my accusers.
I don't know the identity of the 5 Depute Fiscals who decided I should be prosecuted or the identity of the Sheriff who signed the search warrant.
Yet, despite being judged entirely innocent, I am the one deemed liable to carry the financial can in order to secure a legal remedy for that malicious prosecution.
One of the few identities I do know is that of the now former Crown Agent who directed the prosecution against me and that he, David Harvie, is closely linked to MI5.
The Crown have deployed various mechanisms, both financial and legal, to deter my Claim against them trying to derail it at various stages. They have threatened my legal team with Contempt if we sought to lead my Claim in the way we wanted to. That alone speaks volumes to the corrupt and broken nature of the system.
The institutionally corrupt and politically compromised @copfs has throughout their campaign against me sought to use every mechanism available to financially cripple me in order to deny me justice.
They have bypassed the lower courts, where they knew I had a reasonable chance of securing some justice, and remitted my Claim directly to the Court of Session where court costs alone are beyond the reach of most ordinary people, including myself.
Without the very generous financial support of thousands of ordinary, and many extraordinary donors to my crowdfunder, I could not have reached the stage I have.
But I am under no illusion that the State is not finished yet and the powerful and wealthy, in whose interest the legal system exclusively serves, is not minded to allow even a hearing of the evidence in my case.
They know such a hearing will expose how nefarious and incestual dealings are among the establishment in Scotland and their equally powerful and wealthy brethren in Whitehall.
Now that same Crown Office is opposing my efforts to have my case heard by the UK Supreme Court where it is much harder for them to fix the outcome.
On the 9th of December the Inner House of the Court of Session will consider submissions from both the Crown and my own lawyers and determine whether they will back an appeal to the UK Supreme Court.
Without the backing of Scotland's senior judiciary the chances of any appeal we make to the UKSC become vastly diminished. A refusal by them will only serve to confirm that the system here is beyond reform and not fit to hold the title of justice.
For more information: CivilLibertyScotland.com
Working or middle class people accused of a crime, (never mind a sexual crime or misconduct), don't get anonymity whether their Tory, Reform, Labour or Monster Raving Looney Party affiliated.
It's a class issue. Nothing more. It's not left v right.
It's rich v poor or power v pleb
It's one of those rare 21st century issues that people of all ideological positions in the working and middle classes can actually agree on and fight against.
Rich people shouldn't have a legal system that most other people can't access, that's two tier justice.
The law shouldn't be a game of "my bank accounts bigger and I'll drown you in debt."
The overarching issue is the justice system, especially civil, financially punishes victims because their rich abuser can out last them in court fees.
It's not just super injunctions, most civil law is financially unattainable for those seeking fair remedy to their grievance.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
All anyone needs to know about you, your government and your party is that you are aiding and abeting genocide. Scotland wants nothing to do with you.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Leave aside the words, watch this with the sound off, and see someone who takes most of a minute to ask a question, reading off her screen almost the whole time (someone else wrote it?) hardly raising her eyes. We could grab random people off the street to do this better.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Some days, the frustration and irritation is impossible to suppress at the petulant, ill-informed arrogance of people who are getting nearly £80k (more for those also on the council) from the public purse, while so many other, much better, people scrape by.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
129 people. Drawn from the entire population of Scotland (and temporary visitors with visas!). Just 129. And yet here we are. Something is really wrong with the way we are doing this.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
🧵 We don't know if Ms Nevens is misremembering, if she wasn't listening, or is lying. In any case, a legislator highlighting her inability to comprehend & her short-term memory issues is a little embarrassing, esp as there is recording to hand.
So let's help her understand!
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Nothing cheapens democratic rights more than the insanity of allowing any and all on short term visas make laws. It is not inclusive it is dim witted and divisive.
More consequences caused by virtue signalling.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
By his words & actions Ian Murray is not a stereotypical Scot. As a member of the English parliament he is a stereotypical colonial collaborator and a wannabe member of the Anglo-British political elite; a useful idiot derided by many in his party and despised by many in Scotland
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
The face of Scottish graduate overproduction. Entirely sure of themselves and that anyone over 40 is ancient and probably a bigot. ‘Investing in public services’ really means funding roles in the performative Third Sector and politics for them to be employed in.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
We pay the £90k salaries of MPs along with their subsidised meals and their second-home expenses out of our increased taxes.
In return, they take five-star freebies from corporate lobbyists, hike our taxes and tell us plebs to tighten our belts during the cost of living crisis - which they contributed towards.
We are paying the wages of the people who are inflicting financial misery on us.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
"Men are afraid women will laugh at them - women are afraid men will kill them. It's not the same fear women experience when they think about their need for single-sex services."
Susan Smith of @ForWomenScot responds to a question from Green MSP Holly Bruce.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Nicola Sturgeon practiced this blatant sexism.
At one point there were whole swathes of Scotland where a man couldn't stand for parliament due to 100% female shortlists.
Sturgeon, a🇬🇧plant in🏴independence movement was also at black heart orchestraing false allegations v Salmond
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
Funny how all the 'let's give those on welfare a financial kicking' - looking at you @Helen_Whately - it's funny how you never mention how much goes back into the economy FROM benefit payments. People on welfare don't stash money offshore, they spend it.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
The thing is, though, Paul, we can imagine all we like about the SNP, but there's very little chance of them coming back in, all honesty. As Westminster's approved and and controlled administrators of devolution and the governing party of Scotland, it goes against everything that they're are capable of. That is 'sair tae bair' but it's the truth that many fail to see.
At the end of the day, the practical delivery of self-determination, politically and legally, boils down to the direct action of sovereign Scots acting directly.
Like many others, I've had enough of what's gone on over the last decade in particular. It's time that we do things ourselves.
Scottish Currency Group, SSRG, IFS, YesUnited, Salvo, Liberation. AUOB, ISP, Atlas, RIC and so on. every group has a part to play using their strengths, but we need a convention that is based on something we all share in common, the one thing we can all agree on and build from. I keep banging on about this, and I'm sure folk are sick of it, but it's sovereignty.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
But it was designed to do the opposite, Angus. Like devolution itself it was designed to give us the illusion of a way out of the choke hold, something to make us believe and buy into passionately with no clue it was set up to close the door if not permanently then at least semi permanently. It’s a beautiful trap - we believe and chase and try and as we do, failure whittles away the will of those who put their hearts and souls into an already captured dream. Until eventually the great movement will settle down and, largely, give up.
And we get older and more and more tired and nothing about the cry for independence captures the imagination of an (actually pro-indy), younger generation. Why should it? Once upon a time an SNP led government free of Westminster control was an inspiring prospect. Today that thought is a hard barrier to any widespread Scottish demand for independence. Oh you can say all you like that a different party would be elected after independence but that’s not a real answer. ‘We’ll get the right ones in when we’re free’ just rings hollow. ‘Aye, and who’ll make sure they listen to the people, they’ll not bend to the war mongers and the corporations and the backhanders?’
There are two related issues here. First the game will be no more than a Westminster designed cup-de-sac as long as Westminster sets the rules. While we chase their hare and maybe just miss but never catch it, we’re captured.
There’s a way to change the game and it’s not by playing by their rules. We go around them. We remove the one and only hold they have - that any unilateral move towards independence will be treated as invalid and unlawful under international law (no recognition/independence) at the end by establishing the case for self determination under international law. There is huge progress being made towards this result. One example. We’ve now had a P5 member announce at the Security Council meeting in September, that the UN Secretariat needs to investigate the constitutional positions of Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales. That was the result of two years of exhausting lobbying either directly or through lines of communication that work across the members of the C24. and it is like a front page headline on the newspaper that all UN delegates read. If that’s what a group of volunteers can achieve what on earth keeps Scottish, elected representatives from seeing that progress and saying how can we help?
Second, we need to offer a vision of independence that answers the sense of disempowerment, cynicism and rejection of the present political system - with the resulting disengagement - and speaks to the anger and disgust people are feeling about the *system* which the SNP ignored at best, in which obscene profit is generated from unmanageable energy bills, where we can be dragged into wars we don’t want, where the wealthy get richer and the politicians make empty promises, where civil rights, including the right to justice, are disappearing and there is no recourse or accountability. What that vision can be is surely what we should focus on. We have a starting point in the entrenched Scottish constitution which, believe it or not, is much more than popular sovereignty. It addresses many of the burning issues with very specific rights and measures some of which need no adaptation at all. And what a rallying point for a national consciousness. But we are not even having that conversation across many groups working to restart a powerful movement.
Sorry this is long. I hope you’ll give it some consideration.
Graham Bell #ScottishRepublic #Dissent retweeted
From a Scottish independence standpoint, this historical synergy offers a powerful and effective framework rather than an either-or choice.
Support for Scottish independence rests firmly on civic and democratic grounds: residency in Scotland, the popular will expressed through elections, and the democratic deficit that arises when a nation is repeatedly governed by parties and policies it has rejected.
However, this modern civic movement operates in potent synergy with core tenets of a decolonisation standpoint.
By framing the campaign around the removal of an external Westminster-centric authority, the reclaim of economic sovereignty over Scotland's vast natural resources, and the undoing of Westminster's asymmetrical political hierarchies, the movement mirrors the structural objectives of classic decolonisation.
This parallel is most forcefully articulated through the prism of resource control and economic self-determination, echoing the precise grievances of historical anti-colonial struggles.
Central to the Scottish independence argument is the critique of systemic resource extraction most famously illustrated by the management of North Sea oil and gas wealth from the 1970s onward.
Rather than being retained to build a sovereign wealth fund for Scotland's long-term development, these revenues were absorbed by the UK Treasury to finance Westminster's macroeconomic policies and urban regeneration outside Scotland.
In the modern era, this dynamic replicates itself in the green energy sector:
Scotland produces a vast surplus of renewable energy.
Yet, its citizens face disproportionately high transmission charges and grid constraints imposed by UK-wide regulatory frameworks.
This results in severe fuel poverty despite living in a resource-rich land.
Controlling these intrinsic economic assets shifting from a model of external extraction to one of internal stewardship and public investment is a fundamental decolonisation objective.
Rather than being separate impulses, these two standpoints reinforce one another: the decolonisation lens identifies the structural imbalance of power and wealth extraction, while civic nationalism provides the inclusive, democratic tool to resolve it.
‼️🏴This combined approach allows the movement to transcend any single ethnic or historical grievance, uniting all people living in Scotland around a shared constitutional future.
By effectively marrying the structural critique of a decolonisation standpoint with the democratic values of civic nationalism, the movement satisfies the universal international requirements for self-determination.
Ultimately, the absence of a classic overseas colonial history does not undermine Scotland’s case it modernises it.
🏴‼️Scotland proves that the intersection of anti-imperial structural critique and inclusive civic democracy is not just a viable path to self-determination, but a globally proven formula for building a sovereign, progressive nation.
Why do so many modern independence movements succeed?
History shows it’s not about choosing between civic nationalism or anti-colonialism it’s about using the synergy in putting them together.
Here is how the powerful synergy of decolonisation and civic democracy could shape the path for Scotland:
In political history, there is no exact statistical dataset that cleanly isolates “civic nationalist movements alone” from “decolonisation standpoints.”
Why? Because the vast majority of successful mid-to-late 20th-century independence movements used civic nationalism and a decolonisation standpoint in active synergy.
Rather than being opposing concepts, they are complementary elements of the same modern historical wave.
The most common path in the 20th century combined both. When European powers drew administrative boundaries across Africa and Asia, they often bundled distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups into single colonies.
Anti-colonial leaders therefore used civic nationalism as the practical tool to achieve decolonisation.
They constructed a shared political identity based on equal citizenship within the colonial borders, uniting people around a common future rather than common ancestry:
India (1947): The Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi and Nehru, advanced a pluralistic, secular, and civic vision precisely to mobilise Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and hundreds of linguistic communities against British rule.
Ghana (1957): Kwame Nkrumah forged a unified civic Ghanaian identity across the ethnically diverse Gold Coast to secure independence from Britain.
Indonesia: The Pancasila philosophy performed an analogous unifying role against Dutch rule.
In each case, the goal was decolonisation; the internal mechanism was civic. The two concepts are rarely mutually exclusive: one is the target (ending imperial rule), the other the tool (unifying the population).
The historic dominance of decolonisation - The proportion of states in historic terms that were built on a decolonisation standpoint is overwhelmingly dominant.
The United Nations records that more than 80 former colonies have gained independence since 1945, when the organisation was founded with just 51 members.
Today, the UN has 193 member states.
A large majority of the world’s current sovereign nations emerged either through classical overseas decolonisation or through the related dissolution of large multi-ethnic empires.
A decolonisation standpoint is structural and geopolitical:
It defines the struggle against an external imperial power.
It focuses on ending foreign economic extraction and colonial hierarchies.
It asserts the international right to self-determination.
The Rarity of Pure Civic Nationalism By contrast, fewer than roughly 1 in 10 successful modern independence movements can be classified as purely civic nationalist without a significant decolonisation or imperial-dissolution element.
Civic nationalism defines belonging by political allegiance, shared democratic values, adherence to a constitution, and residency rather than shared ethnicity or ancestry.
Clearer examples outside the classic overseas colonial pattern include the peaceful Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
Certain strands of the Soviet dissolution in 1991 (particularly the Baltic states, which framed their recovery primarily in terms of democratic self-government).
Even these cases contained cultural and ethnic components; pure ideal transitions to independence are rare.
In contrast active, peaceful campaigns in established democracies such as the Scottish independence movement rely overwhelmingly on civic nationalism, emphasising democratic mandate, popular sovereignty, and the right to choose.