Wind Farm Proposals and SNP Tyranny

Heavens forbid! That wily Scottish Government has overturned a completely legitimate wind-farm denial from god-fearing locally elected council.

Apparently according to the good ole' Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, the Scottish Government is the SNP, but hey ho' let's not nitpick, I blame the Tories for everything when I'm actually referring to the Lib-Con Westminster Coalition under the undemocratic FTP system. It's just that saying that is quite a mouthful.

The article revolves around a few points.

1. Dumfries and Galloway  refused the application for a wind farm. The Scottish Government SNP overturned the application.

2. Moray Council refused the application for a wind farm. The Scottish Government SNP overturned the application.

3.  Aberdeenshire Council and Scottish Natural Heritage voiced concerns about the Moray windfarm, though not what about specifically.

Dumfries and Galloway tried to block a wind farm on the grounds of...well, no grounds, in-fact, apart from the visuals. In-fact the council were incredibly misinformed  that the proposed site was not in an Area of Search for wind turbines. It was, it was not even on the border of an Area of Search, it was smack bang in the middle. Let us note that an Area of Search is an area drawn up within the council's own Wind Energy Policy Guidance.
The councillors then claimed that Wind Turbines caused road safety concerns without evidence to back it up. The Principal Reporter Timothy Brian found the council's behaviour unreasonable enough to incur liability costs.

Moray's final report is a lot more detailed and deals with visual, landscape, natural heritage and trunk road concerns, of which there are 18 pages of glorious bullet-points. It should be worth noting this quote from the Conservative website:

Moray Council refused the application for the windfarm in Keith, while nearby Aberdeenshire Council and Scottish Natural Heritage also voiced concerns about the development.

Is something I'd like to deal with, here is the actual concern the quote fails to go into:

I note the reservations of SNH and Aberdeenshire Council about aspects of the
methodology used for the landscape and visual impact assessment which formed part of
the Environmental Statement (ES). However, I am satisfied that the assessment conforms
with established best practice outlined in the Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact
Assessment, and that the updated cumulative assessment, together with the residential
amenity survey, address any gaps in the original assessment.

Ah, so when we say reservations, we are actually failing to say exactly what, are we? As it turns out SNH were worried about aspects of the methodology used for the assessment. The conservative website seems to fail to mention all the plethora of evidence that shows that Scottish Natural Heritage is quite happy with other aspects of the Wind Farm:

The appeal site is not subject to any special natural heritage
designations.

SNH’s broad overview of where there is likely to be greatest scope for windfarm 

development, and where there are the most significant constraints, in natural heritage
terms. The appeal site lies within Zone 1, which “identifies areas at the broad scale with
least sensitivity to windfarms, with the greatest opportunity for development, within which
overall a large number of developments could be acceptable in natural heritage terms, so
long as they are undertaken sensitively and with due regard to cumulative impact.”

There are no objections to the proposal on nature conservation or historic
environment grounds. SNH raised no objection to the proposal, which would not affect any
site designated for its ecological or nature conservation interest.

I recommend reading the report yourself if you've got the time, it makes for an interesting read into all the considerations put into windfarm placement and development, and deals with Aberdeenshire Council's concerns some more. 

But what should become abundantly clear is the fact that local democracy is not being destroyed, it is not the SNP taking away the will of the people (why would they overthrow the will of one of their own minority councils?) These are sites for wind farms, all of them were in proposed areas for wind farm development. When a reporter goes in and says a council is unjustified, or even wrong, perhaps you should point your finger at the actual one in trouble.

Unionist Referendum Question, World Rejoices.

With the advent of the long awaited referendum question from the panel of elite, unionist intellects, we now have a question capable of being fair, palpable, groundbreaking, and cures cancer.


So here's the Nationalists dangerously worded referendum question that will open the gates to Hell and bring back Shub-Niggurath , the black goat of the woods with a thousand young.

Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?

Yes []

No []

And then the other one which on reading cured my prostate and allowed me to once again copulate with my wife:

Scotland should become an independent state:

I agree []

I disagree []

So on first glance it seems that for all the unionists humming and hawing, they were completely unable to come up with a question for the referendum that would prevent them from being accused of pro-UK bias. So a bit-of rewording and hey presto! "This! This must be the question," they say, "because it removes all the bias of Yes/No wording, take that Nationalists, you monsters."

Cute, but nonetheless when push came to shove they put themselves on the spot, and chose pretty much the same question as the nationalist camp did. It'll be interesting to see how much they'll inflate this as if it was actually the second coming. The Scotsman is already trumpeting how much better it is.

Labour/SNP coalition accused of faking petition signatures.

Catchy title, shame about the content.
I'm a killjoy.

Hypocrisy Countdown

Our world is filled with smoke and mirrors, but you'd be surprised how much of it seems to make Scotland a proverbial moorland of doublethink and outright lying. I thought I'd round up all the fine double standards of the Unionist bloc I have seen in the past few days alone.


This Thursday Michael Kelly decided that protests are a waste of time for everyone. I'm sure many fundamental human rights such as free thought are a waste of time to Michael. Obviously Michael had decided that the public had forgotten, or he himself had forgotten his own party's stance on the Orange Order.

This Friday Anas Sarwar has outright demanded that the Scottish Celebrations for the Olympic Homecoming should encompass all Olympic Athletes, not just Scottish ones. He seems to be under the impression Scottish people celebrating Scottish things is politically motivated. This is despite the fact that the Labour Council did the exact same Scottish Olympic celebrations during the Beijing Olympics, and Labour in Wales are doing a Welsh homecoming. Is this a case of Anas Sarwar thinking we forgot, or him forgetting himself?

Today, Saturday, the TwitSphere is abuzz with Tony Benn's archaic look on Nationality. Apparently it is fine to be Scottish within the British Isles if you are under the heel of Westminster, but you can't call yourself British and be from the British Isles if you use a different mode of Government to the status-quo.


I look forward to Sunday.

How to Lose Friends and Make Enemies with Willie Rennie

It's old news on the interblags that Alison Elliot has given poor Willie a run for his money. Apparently the convener of SVCO doesn't take too kindly to the old tactic of "Alex Salmond sent an E-mail, let's blow it out of proportion" so often used within the Unionist Wing. Suddenly Willie has an opponent not used to the rulebook the Lib Dems live by, dubbed "Student Politics for Dummies."

One look at Willie's twitter however, shows that he is ploughing on ahead as is, dissenters are not to be seen upon his page. Today's news is how he is off to Peterhead fish auction. Addressing the twit-o-sphere, or in-fact the world at large - comes second.

I'm still waiting patiently for some sort of reply, even something in the range of 140 Unicode characters.

We may be waiting until Hell freezes over.

EDIT: Hoorah! Found a response!

“I've clearly touched a raw nerve. These are serious concerns about the impartiality of the Chief Executive of SCVO and clearly deserve a better response.
"I think people will be concerned that SCVO has taken one side of a highly polarised, political debate. First we had the attempt to undermine the launch of Better Together and now hard evidence of collusion with one of Alex Salmond's close advisers.
"SCVO are in serious danger of undermining their reputation."
- Willie Rennie


Oh dear Willie, I didn't know that "touched a raw nerve" was a phrase for "baseless, groundless accustations." Have you even read the letter?

This load of waffle still counts as burrying your head in the sand. You haven't addressed a thing, and you were so full of vigor and pomp a few days ago.

Cathy Newman's not so FactCheck

I recently read an article by one Patrick Worrall who writes for Channel 4. The article boiled down to "independence leads to uncertainty," in reference to Scotland's Olympic funding for competing in Rio 2016. A timely article for the ending of the Olympics.

But what I am more interested in is the subtle use of claiming that both sides of the independence debate are muddying the Olympics with politicization. This is not the first article to do so, and I suspect 'till the end of the Olympics it will not be the last, but it's always fun to look at the evidence.

So! Let us see how the Olympics have been muddied by both the unionist and nationalist blocs.

"The eyes of the world are on the Olympics and the whole of Scotland is united in supporting our Olympians and Paralympians - our 'Scolympians' - to go for gold." - Alex Salmond

"Andy Murray, great Scot and Olympic Champion, holding a gold medal and proudly draped in the Union Jack - eat your heart out Alex Salmond!" - Conservative Struan Stevenson.

"As we watch Andy Murray singing our National Anthem, never forget that there are small-minded Nationalists who want to destroy TeamGB," -  Murdo Fraser.

"Hear hear Chris Hoy. Down with Alex Salmond's racist ethno-nationalism. #Olympic Britain, not #Scotland." 

- Gideon Mailer (OlympicVillageNovel on Twitter).

“At the biggest sporting event of our lives, the one that has most passionately engaged the country, we are cheering for a political entity that is meant to be about to break up.

“One of the many happy features of these wonderful Olympics is surely that they have retarded Alex Salmond in his campaign to end the Union.”- Boris Johnson

One of these quotes is not like the others. Indeed I have searched high and low for something, somewhere that hints that in some way Nationalists have in any way politicized the Olympics. All I have found is complaints from nationalists that the unionists have politicized the Olympics!

Perhaps they are referring to the furore of  Kim Little and Ifeoma Dieke not singing the national anthem, but if that were the case then why are we not hearing anything about the Welsh using the games to political ends if Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy also did not sing?

So you can be the judge, is The First Minister of Scotland wishing Scottish athletes the very best in getting gold medals the same as attacking Alex Salmond himself, every single time a Scottish Olympian wins? Am I not looking hard enough or do these so-called politicization attempts from the nationalists really exist?

It's a good thing there's only the Paralympics to go.