The thing about an interest in history is how it educates you to see the same old tricks being played on a presumed gullable populous by politicians seeking to protect their own backsides from public scrutiny by variations of, 'Look! There's a squirrel.'
In May 1940, as the German Blitzkrieg was battering its way across the Low Countries, a squadron of German Heinkel 111 bombers mistook Friebourg in Germany for Sedan in France and bombed it, causing numerous fatalities among its German population. Of course German propaganda could not admit they were bombing their own people so cast around for a scapegoat and blamed the RAF while quietly side stepping the already printed stories of how the Luftwaffe had removed the self same RAF from the skies of the Low Countries. Instantly the tales of the RAF 'terror raids' on innocent civilians became fact, even though no RAF aircraft had been within 100 miles of Friebourg that day. On the wave of disgust felt by the German public from the Friebourg bombing Hitler came up with his for every 1000 kilos of bombs the English drop on Germany, we will drop five times as many on English cities speech. Herman Goring made the claim that no RAF bomber would ever reach Berlin, let alone any other German city, only to wake up next day to be told the RAF had bombed Berlin in response to Hitler's bombing of London and flown away without a scratch. The RAF that night managed to bomb the US Embassy and a couple of houses down the street. It turned out the RAF bombers could not hit a barn door if they were right in front of it as they only missed their target, the Berlin Railway terminus by around three miles, so much for RAF precision bombing. There were seven dead Berliners and 25 injured at a time when around 200 Londoners were being killed and six hundred injured most nights but damn these RAF 'terror bombers' roared the German media of the day, we must have revenge and flatten every English City. By mid May 1941 the same German civilians who had been calling for revenge for the murdered children of Friebourg had changed their tune to grudging admiration for the ordinary people of England who were the first civilians not to break in the face of Luftwaffe bombing. The more so as RAF Wellingtons, Hampdens and Stirlings started to pummel the Ruhr with area bombing most nights - still mostly missing their targets by a fair margin and more likely to flatten some isolated farm house than the Krupps Factory in Essen but wearing the population down with sleep deprivation all the same.
It is into this world of lies and hubris we must place the Unionist politicians and their claims regarding the SNP government budget for 2016-17. Imperator Mussolini look a like, Scotch Viceroy Mundelli, has taken a lift from Hiter's Friebourg bomb's speech except in this case it is not bombs he wishes to drop but the blame for the cuts to council budgets Mr Swinney announced in his budget speech. According to Imperator Mundelli, UK Government cuts to the Scotch pocket money are not as viscous and nasty as Mr Swinney's council tax freeze on Unionist councilors. Using Hitleresque hubris Imperator Mundelli is trying to claim Scotland is better off than the actual bottom line figures demonstrate and the real answer to these UK Treasury imposed cuts is to make the Scottish taxpayer pay one and half times the rest of the UK's tax using the 'new powers' in the Scotland Bill to balance the books. Now I might be on shaky ground but are the tax raising powers Imperator Mundelli claims Mr Swinney should use not been written off as disastrous and unworkable by their Lordships in committee and have been sent back to Mr Osborne, to think again. So we have Mundelli telling Mr Swinney to use powers he does not have and will not have any clue as to how they may work until February 2016 at the earliest. This is, currently, the Unionists best shot, their Friebourg moment - if you will. The Unionists have bombed the Scots with a Scotch Budget reduction of 5%, in real terms and, as the impact of the cuts hit their last Unionist bastions in Scotland's councils, are now looking to blame anyone but the UK Government for the negative political impact this is having on a Scottish electorate a majority who no longer believe anything Westminster Unionist politicians say nor their tame Scotch media outputs of 'SNP Baad' in defence of the Union.
In the background Audit Scotland is only going and publishing reports about how badly many of these self same Unionist councils are being run using descriptions such as, dysfunctional, ineffectual, inefficient, self involved or phrases such as 'operate as a cabal' or 'detached from the community they serve' to describe their operations, budgeting and organisation. As others have pointed out, one way to protect Scottish council services from the UK Government budget cuts would be to get rid of the Council CEO's and other hangers on with their six figure, overblown salaries to save money rather than sacking the people who actually deliver the services for the council.
The dichotomy for Imperator Mundelli and the Unionists is their 'terror bombing by a thousand cuts' campaign is failing, instead of weakening support for the SNP, it is perversely increasing support for the SNP in Scotland as the average Scot, just like his German counterpart in 1941, increasingly sees all the Unionist claims for what they are, propaganda which seeks merely to scare them into line. It is interesting to note that by the middle of 1941 the SD were telling Hitler and Geobels, in their daily reports, ordinary German people were still listening to broadcasts from the UK, Switzerland and the USA even though there had been a prohibition in place since September 1939. The only good point, they informed the 'Fuehrer', was the German people were just as cynical about the truth of foreign news broadcasts as they were about their German news counterparts.
Imperator Mundelli does not even have this small comfort as 60% of Scots no longer trust the BBC as an impartial news presenter and see it as a Westminster propaganda front while, instead, they increasingly trust sources of citizen journalism such as Wings over Scotland, Bella Caledonia or even wee blogs like this Tarff Advertiser which gets, on average, 10,000 unique page hits a month.
The truth is you can not fool all of the people, all of the time; yet the Unionists still think they can in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, clearly demonstrated in the current levels of support for the SNP in opinion poll after poll.
In May 1940, as the German Blitzkrieg was battering its way across the Low Countries, a squadron of German Heinkel 111 bombers mistook Friebourg in Germany for Sedan in France and bombed it, causing numerous fatalities among its German population. Of course German propaganda could not admit they were bombing their own people so cast around for a scapegoat and blamed the RAF while quietly side stepping the already printed stories of how the Luftwaffe had removed the self same RAF from the skies of the Low Countries. Instantly the tales of the RAF 'terror raids' on innocent civilians became fact, even though no RAF aircraft had been within 100 miles of Friebourg that day. On the wave of disgust felt by the German public from the Friebourg bombing Hitler came up with his for every 1000 kilos of bombs the English drop on Germany, we will drop five times as many on English cities speech. Herman Goring made the claim that no RAF bomber would ever reach Berlin, let alone any other German city, only to wake up next day to be told the RAF had bombed Berlin in response to Hitler's bombing of London and flown away without a scratch. The RAF that night managed to bomb the US Embassy and a couple of houses down the street. It turned out the RAF bombers could not hit a barn door if they were right in front of it as they only missed their target, the Berlin Railway terminus by around three miles, so much for RAF precision bombing. There were seven dead Berliners and 25 injured at a time when around 200 Londoners were being killed and six hundred injured most nights but damn these RAF 'terror bombers' roared the German media of the day, we must have revenge and flatten every English City. By mid May 1941 the same German civilians who had been calling for revenge for the murdered children of Friebourg had changed their tune to grudging admiration for the ordinary people of England who were the first civilians not to break in the face of Luftwaffe bombing. The more so as RAF Wellingtons, Hampdens and Stirlings started to pummel the Ruhr with area bombing most nights - still mostly missing their targets by a fair margin and more likely to flatten some isolated farm house than the Krupps Factory in Essen but wearing the population down with sleep deprivation all the same.
It is into this world of lies and hubris we must place the Unionist politicians and their claims regarding the SNP government budget for 2016-17. Imperator Mussolini look a like, Scotch Viceroy Mundelli, has taken a lift from Hiter's Friebourg bomb's speech except in this case it is not bombs he wishes to drop but the blame for the cuts to council budgets Mr Swinney announced in his budget speech. According to Imperator Mundelli, UK Government cuts to the Scotch pocket money are not as viscous and nasty as Mr Swinney's council tax freeze on Unionist councilors. Using Hitleresque hubris Imperator Mundelli is trying to claim Scotland is better off than the actual bottom line figures demonstrate and the real answer to these UK Treasury imposed cuts is to make the Scottish taxpayer pay one and half times the rest of the UK's tax using the 'new powers' in the Scotland Bill to balance the books. Now I might be on shaky ground but are the tax raising powers Imperator Mundelli claims Mr Swinney should use not been written off as disastrous and unworkable by their Lordships in committee and have been sent back to Mr Osborne, to think again. So we have Mundelli telling Mr Swinney to use powers he does not have and will not have any clue as to how they may work until February 2016 at the earliest. This is, currently, the Unionists best shot, their Friebourg moment - if you will. The Unionists have bombed the Scots with a Scotch Budget reduction of 5%, in real terms and, as the impact of the cuts hit their last Unionist bastions in Scotland's councils, are now looking to blame anyone but the UK Government for the negative political impact this is having on a Scottish electorate a majority who no longer believe anything Westminster Unionist politicians say nor their tame Scotch media outputs of 'SNP Baad' in defence of the Union.
In the background Audit Scotland is only going and publishing reports about how badly many of these self same Unionist councils are being run using descriptions such as, dysfunctional, ineffectual, inefficient, self involved or phrases such as 'operate as a cabal' or 'detached from the community they serve' to describe their operations, budgeting and organisation. As others have pointed out, one way to protect Scottish council services from the UK Government budget cuts would be to get rid of the Council CEO's and other hangers on with their six figure, overblown salaries to save money rather than sacking the people who actually deliver the services for the council.
The dichotomy for Imperator Mundelli and the Unionists is their 'terror bombing by a thousand cuts' campaign is failing, instead of weakening support for the SNP, it is perversely increasing support for the SNP in Scotland as the average Scot, just like his German counterpart in 1941, increasingly sees all the Unionist claims for what they are, propaganda which seeks merely to scare them into line. It is interesting to note that by the middle of 1941 the SD were telling Hitler and Geobels, in their daily reports, ordinary German people were still listening to broadcasts from the UK, Switzerland and the USA even though there had been a prohibition in place since September 1939. The only good point, they informed the 'Fuehrer', was the German people were just as cynical about the truth of foreign news broadcasts as they were about their German news counterparts.
Imperator Mundelli does not even have this small comfort as 60% of Scots no longer trust the BBC as an impartial news presenter and see it as a Westminster propaganda front while, instead, they increasingly trust sources of citizen journalism such as Wings over Scotland, Bella Caledonia or even wee blogs like this Tarff Advertiser which gets, on average, 10,000 unique page hits a month.
The truth is you can not fool all of the people, all of the time; yet the Unionists still think they can in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, clearly demonstrated in the current levels of support for the SNP in opinion poll after poll.
Be interesting to see what the yookay establishment come up with next. They will be extra desperate once we get xmas out the way and the Scotgov election looms, at the start of 2016, becoming ever more real. Hmmm.
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