Bloody tories? Machine gun them.

Little old ladies. They speak wisdom.

Successful Revolutions - James Connolly

Wise words from Edinburgh's finest son.

Housing Benefit cuts - who are the real scroungers?

Scotland pays 9.4% of UK tax with just 8.4% of the population - and they get out oil too!

Your Brothers Are Fighting - Why Aren't You? - 1970's Provisional IRA poster

Provisional Irish Republican Army recruitment poster circa early-1970's.

Thanks to the Trades Unions and all who stood and fought for all of our rights

CONFRONT FASCISM

No Cuts! Tens of thousands turnout for British anti-austerity protests (VIDEO)

No Cuts! Tens of thousands turnout for British anti-austerity protests (VIDEO)

Published: RT.com 20 October, 2012, 22:11 

http://rt.com/news/austerity-cuts-protests-march-869/

Demonstrators hold placards during a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in Oxford Circus, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

(11.3Mb)embed video

Nurses, teachers and off duty policemen marched with anti-war activists, politicians and the unemployed in a massive protest against the Conservative led Government’s austerity measures, which they say are killing Britain.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the demonstrations, which was led by a group of jobless young people. More than 250 coaches brought people to London to take part. There were similar protests in Belfast and Glasgow.

Protesters blew whistles and held up flags and banners as they marched though central London. One homemade banner read, ‘Cameron has butchered Britain’.  Other banners read ‘cut war not welfare’, and ‘need before greed’.

RT’s correspondent in London, Sara Firth, who watched the march and spoke to some of the protesters, said that cuts to the NHS and the police force were the areas that people were most concerned about.

“People have turned out here today from all walks of life. Families and all age groups are being affected by this,” She said.

The cuts have severely affected the police force, the National Health Service (NHS) and the armed forces.

One demonstrator told RT why he was marching, “We want our children to have a good education and good health care, this is what my grandmother who was a suffragette – [the women who fought for the female vote in Britain] –  actually fought for and my father spent six years in north Africa fighting for a decent country and this government is going to destroy it.”

Demonstrators hold placards before the start of a protest marchorganised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) , on the embankment, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

Children, dressed as public sector workers, hold placards before the start of a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), on the embankment, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

There was a strong trade union presence at all the three nationwide events.    

The head of the Trade Union’s Congress (TUC) Brendan Barber said that the message from the protesters is that austerity isn’t working.

“The government doesn’t understand the pain that their cuts and their economic program are having in communities up and down the country. And the government needs to swallow its pride and go for plan B, because Plan A just isn’t working.”

Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, Britain’s biggest public sector trade union, told RT.

Barber and other union leaders have called for a general strike and further protests to hammer home their message to the government.

Other groups involved in the protest included the Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has slammed the government for what it says are “disastrous” implications for public services financing by committing tens of billions of pounds to a new nuclear weapons system.

In a rally in Hyde Park, which took place after the march, Labour leader Ed Milliband took to the stage saying that if elected his party would

“stand for all the young people in the country who want to work in Britain but cannot find it today.” 

Demonstrators listen to speakers in Hyde Park at the end of a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Neil Hall)

Demonstrators pass the Houses of Parliament during a protest march in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Neil Hall)

An embarrassing week

The march will provide further discomfort for David Cameron’s conservative led coalition, which is reeling from a week of negative headlines.

On Friday Andrew Mitchel, the Chief Whip or party enforcer, resigned after a row in which he’s accused of calling the police ‘plebs’ – a class-laden insult often used by Britain’s upper classes to insult common working people.

In a second embarrassment, the chancellor, George Osborne, was caught sitting in a first class train carriage with only a standard class ticket. This was ammunition for Tory critics who accuse them of being the party of privilege. The unions were quick to pounce on his actions: “The Chancellor eventually paid for his ticket, but the rest of us are paying the price for his disastrous policies.”

But Sajid Javid, a Conservative Treasury minister, said the government must stick to its guns and said that figures out last week showing a fall in unemployment and inflation showed that its economic policies were working.

While Mark Littlewood, the director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which describes itself as an independent free market think tank, said the government must not listen to militant union leaders and that relatively the cuts Britain has seen are tiny.

But for many of those voicing their discontent on the streets of London and for people in the UK who have lost their jobs because of austerity, prudent economic principles appear to be just background noise.

Police officers attempt to detain a demonstrator during a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in Oxford Street, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

Demonstrators hold placards before the start of a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), on the embankment, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

Demonstrators in wheelchairs block Park Lane during a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Neil Hall)

Police officers scuffle with demonstrators during a protest march organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), in Oxford Street, in central London October 20, 2012 (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)

Scottish Government donate £10,000 to FBU for Palestinian Fire Fighter training.

The REAL Scottish Defence League applauds and wholeheartedly supports the news that the Scottish Government today provided the Fire Brigades Union woth over £10,000 of funding to pay for Palestinian firefighters to come over to Scotland to learn valuable life saving skills and expertise.

Saor Palestine, Saor Alba.

Fire Brigades Union - Scotland - http://www.fbuscotland.org/
Scottish-Palestine Solidarity Campaign - http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/

Let's take our chance for a fairer, better Scotland

SCOTLAND becoming an independent nation can benefit everyone with the country being more prosperous than ever before.
(SOURCE: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/lets-take-our-chance-for-a-fairer-better-1380877)

First minister Alex Salmond and Prime Minister David Cameron

WE caught a glimpse of the future yesterday when David Cameron came calling on Alex Salmond.

Two countries, two ministers – Prime and First – a courteous welcome and a deal called the Edinburgh Agreement. The meeting was between the leaders of two different countries on equal terms.

When Scotland becomes independent, such meetings and agreements will be commonplace.

The relationship between Scotland and England after independence will be a healthier one – close, naturally, but one in which Scotland has an equal voice and where there is mutual respect.

That respect can be seen in the terms of the deal signed yesterday.

In an important clause, both governments agree they will respect the verdict of the people in 2014.

If it is a yes vote, the London government must start negotiating the new partnership between Scotland and England in good faith.

It’s in everyone’s interests that such discussions are positive – just as the discussions leading up to the historic meeting were.

Already even the prospect of an independent nation has changed the way Scotland is treated by Westminster.

It was only in January that Mr Cameron hinted the London government would run its own referendum in Scotland and dictate the timing, the question and even who could vote. That intervention caused outrage, with thousands of people rushing to join the SNP in the space of a few weeks.

Mr Cameron quickly pulled back – despite some hotheads urging him to use London’s power to call a ‘snap’ referendum

We are in a much better place, as yesterday’s smiles and handshakes demonstrated clearly.

The referendum will be made in Scotland, with our own parliament passing the law to make it happen.

The SNP always made it clear they were open to putting a second question on the ballot paper, but the compromise means that will not now happen. The refusal of the unionist parties to put forward a second question means Scottish people have a clear choice.

We can stay with the union as it stands – with four per cent of the seats in Westminster, where all the big economic decisions are made.

Or we can grasp the opportunity offered by a yes vote. That’s an opportunity to make Scotland both fairer and more prosperous.

Recent figures from the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions, uncovered by MSP Linda Fabiani, found the gap between the highest and lowest earners grew by £237 per week between1997 and 2010, when Labour was in power.

The incomes of the poorest 10 per cent of households grew by just £24 per week under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. By contrast, the incomes of the top 10 per cent of households increased by 10 times that figure, going up from £897 to £1153 per week.

Scotland can do better. A yes vote in 2014 also offers a chance to make Scotland more prosperous.

Just this weekend a group of prominent business people, many of whom previously favoured more powers for the Scottish parliament, signed an open letter backing independence.

They wrote: “We believe that if our nation is to realise its full potential and if we are to deliver a fairer, more competitive and faster growing economy, Scotland’s parliament needs the full range of economic and social levers.

“In the absence of any clear statement from the other parties in the No campaign, the only choice that will result in the Scottish Parliament having the fiscal powers it so badly needs is to vote yes for independence.”

They included Jim McColl, Scotland’s most successful industrialist and Malcolm Fraser, who runs an architectural practice.

They have concluded, at this early stage, that there is no third option. A no vote is exactly that, a vote for nothing – no ambition and no progress for Scotland.

Yesterday was a historic day, but it was just a taster for a truly historic opportunity.

This is England: Child starved to death after benefits delay

Why is this not headline news? A child starved to death as a result of delays in benefit payments. In London. In Westminster. The wealthiest borough of London and the vanguard council for tory benefit cuts. Oh, but wait, its okay, the kid was an asylum seeker, so not a real person after all then, just a foreigner. I mean that is the only reason we can think of why this is not the most important piece of news in the country today.

We NEED Independence, to safeguard the future for ALL of the children in our land, to ensure they never suffer the barbarism inflicted upon them by the English electorate ever again - the REAL Scottish Defence League.

Charities warn of more tragedies unless flaw in transition system is fixed

Child starved to death after benefits delay

05/10/2012 | By Keith Cooper

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The government has been warned it must urgently fix flaws in its support system for successful asylum seekers, after a destitute child starved to death in temporary accommodation in Westminster.

Further tragedies are increasingly likely as more asylum claims are processed while support funding dries up, organisations claim.

Details of the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of ‘child EG’ and the unrelated death of his mother ‘Mrs G’ surfaced in a serious case review and a letter sent to the government by child safety experts at Westminster Council, a flagship Conservative borough.

The case review found that the family had become dependent on ‘ad hoc’ charitable handouts despite a successful asylum claim because of ‘significant problems’ transferring the family from Home Office to mainstream welfare support services.

The family of three was forced to ‘actually become homeless’ before local authorities could offer official help, it added.

The Westminster letter - sent last March but only released to Inside Housing this week - urges Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions officials to review and improve transitional support for successful asylum seekers.

‘Joined up government should be able to manage the transition from one form of public support to another,’ Terry Bamford, chair of Westminster’s Local Safeguarding Children’s Board, wrote in the letter.

Asylum seeker charities this week warned of a deterioration in government support services in the 18 months since the letter was sent.

The Home Office axed its funding for Refugee Integration and Employment Service - which paid for transitional support for successful asylum seekers - last September, they point out.

Judith Dennis, policy officer at the Refugee Council, said the problems highlighted in the review were common.

Daoud Zaaroura, chief executive of the North of England Refugee Service, said the issues raised in Westminster’s letter were unresolved. ‘Without RIES, or something similar, there is a real threat of the tragic case of EG happening all over again.’

Dave Garratt, chief executive of Refugee Action, said the newly appointed immigration minister, Mark Harper, must ‘urgently address the shortfall in resourcing for these essential services’.

‘We are deeply concerned that our caseworkers are seeing increasing numbers of recent refugees who are being forced onto the streets,’ he added.

James Thomas, director of family services at Westminster Council, said it had provided more details of the case to the Home Office at its request.

A spokesperson for the UK Border Agency said: ‘We have already made several improvements to transitional arrangements.’ Organisations housing asylum seekers for the UKBA must now notify local authorities when applications are successful and refugees can remain in UKBA-funded accommodation for one month after a decision. Funding is given to voluntary groups which offer support and advice, the spokesperson added.

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 26 January 2012 Time: 10:29 AM ET

SOURCE:http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factorscontributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A study of averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence andsocial conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.

Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.

"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Simple viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."

Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programsencourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.