This period of grief is being used to deceive the public

I MADE the mistake of thinking it was safe to turn on the radio for the first time in nearly a week, this afternoon, Wednesday the 14th, to immediately hear some well spoken, southern English lady coming out with the absolutely preposterous statement that surveys have just told them that one in every two people in the UK has broken down in tears over the death of the monarch.

I would believe one in two of the population of these islands had broken down in the past few weeks due to them trying to figure out how on earth they are going to keep a roof over the heads this winter, and how on earth they are going to be able to both heat their home and feed their children in this hugely energy rich country of ours, as we pay 60% more per unit for our energy than energy deficient London, around 100 times more than our neighbours in Norway do who apparently have less oil than us!

When you also add in the exorbitant amount we pay at the pump, this hugely oil rich country that we are, as Westminster tries to extract every single penny it can, from every angle, to try hide the real consequences of an absolutely catastrophic Brexit farce, then to come out with the utterly ridiculous statement that one in two people on these islands cried at the death of the monarch, you begin to realise this actually is state control and global deception in a truly massive way.

Let’s have a quick look at this ridiculous statement: today over 1/4 of the population are teenagers and younger. If there were more than 5% of them shed a tear it would be a minor miracle, so we are already at around 70%-75% of the population.

Up here in Scotland they say as many as one in two people do not want the monarchy to continue after the death of Elizabeth. Add to this again at least 1/4 are teenagers or under and you have another approximately 3 million people which equates to about 5% of the UK, more or less, so we are now approaching 2/3rds of the population.

Then we have the Welsh, half of Northern Ireland, republicans everywhere, and don’t forgot England has a hugely diverse population and try as I will, I can’t for the life of me see more than a tiny percentage of these people, and there are millions of them, who will be even remotely interested in what happens in the royal family.

Even if I have these figures wrong it would still be approaching half of the population already, so if you go by these absolutely preposterous claims, this means every single adult left, based in the UK, wept at her passing. What a load of utter nonsense.

In reality, despite the Tory-controlled BBC, and the billionaire controlled mainstream media trying to portray to the rest of the world that people over here are walking round the streets dressed in black, bumping into each other as they can’t see a thing as they are blinded by floods of tears, the truth is, nothing could actually be further from the truth.

The plain truth is unless they only polled the likes of Tarquin and Prunella in the Shires, then as ever they are treating us all like fools, as ever.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people, including myself, think she seemed like a very decent woman trying to keep a very dysfunctional family together as well as she could, and for these things alone she deserves our respect, and may she rest in peace.

In reality if one in every 10 people shed a tear for her it would be a minor miracle. Respect? Yes, Floods of tears wherever you look? Absolute baloney.

Whatever next, Liz Truss wanting to abolish the monarchy?

Iain K
Dunoon

CHANNEL 4 News did a piece about young people standing fairly near St Giles’ Cathedral, where the Queen laid at rest, holding blank pages aloft defending the right to protest. One young woman onlooker said in her view this was disrespectful to the Queen. Another, ironically, quite elderly gentleman agreed with their right to free speech and to protest.

One of the protesters voiced his concerns of what the implications would be if, rather than holding just blank sheets of paper, they had written “abolish the monarchy” or “who elected King Charles?” One of his female colleagues said: “I suppose we don’t want to get arrested.” It was put to her that some people will not like this and perhaps this isn’t the place to be protesting when people are mourning.

Her response was, “I can understand that, however whenever there is a protest it’s never the time, it’s never the right place, it’s always ‘be quiet and find a more appropriate time’, well when is the right time then?”

At Westminster in London a barrister Paul Powlesland, protested with a blank sheet of paper and was confronted by a policeman, asking for his details. He was interviewed on Newsnight along with Shabnam Chaudhri, a former Detective Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. He stressed his protest had nothing to do with the funeral of the Queen but that quite a lot of people feel very strongly about protesting the very political act of the King taking power and becoming Charles III.

Shabnam said the police had to be impartial and to ensure all the public are protected including the protesters. She made something pretty clear, however, that I, and I’m sure many others, found chilling. She said the police could remove a protester to protect that person from angry members of the public. She added, “If they are removed from the equation, then that’s solved the issue.”

Really? You solve an issue of a potential assault on a peaceful protester by removing the protester rather than protecting them from angry members of the public? Scary stuff indeed!

This really is a very slippery slope particularly in circumstances where protesters are clearly acting in a calm and peaceful manner. What’s next? The Thought Police, a la Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Without significant protest when would women have achieved the right to vote in the UK? When would apartheid have ended in South Africa? When would Thatcher’s much loathed poll tax have been scrapped? When would working people have been paid a decent living wage?

The irony of my last example is that the current Tory government and their predecessors have smashed rates of pay, terms and conditions hard fought for by workers via their unions by protesting and striking during much of the last century. However, relatively more recently protests and strikes have began to increase again as many are waking up and smelling the coffee!

The right to protest and to strike must be just as sacrosanct as the rights of those with very strong feelings for the Queen!

Ivor Telfer
Dalgety Bay, Fife

READER Charlie Kerr, of Glenrothes, correctly reminded everyone that the c oronation stone, back on its way to the land of stolen property from around the globe, is made of Perthshire sandstone. Edward the First was well aware of this when he sent his army back to ravage and search the surrounding area three months later. The Scots did not bother to pick it up after the Treaty of Northampton, knowing it was a fake. The London mob did not know that and were refusing to allow it to be removed.

Therefore, it could not possible be the same Lia Fal stone mentioned in the annals as being from a meteorite and of black creosote with runic markings and a footprint indent for the King of Scots to Crown himself King. So, it cannot possibly be the same Jacob’s pillow as the fabled one carried from Egypt from the Holy Land, or from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland, where the Scots came from, by Queen Scotia and her Celtic mercenaries.

I had the pleasure of meeting with stonemason, Cooncillor and Justice of the Peace, Bertie Gray after a meeting in the old SNP HQ at the corner of Elmbank St and Bath St, Glasgow in the 60’s. He told me and all and sundry that he made so many copies that he forgot which stane was which. There was a copy in the Arlington Bar at the Charing Cross end of Woodlands Road, near his yard in Sauchiehall St, placed in the lounge in the 90s. The Dublin charge hand, Paddy Ledi, placed a sign inviting anyone to sit on it and crown themselves King or Queen of the Scots.

Bertie Gray inserted in the fake Coronation Stane a note saying: “March 1951. Stone of Destiny, This Stone belongs to Scotland. It was stolen by Edward 1 of England in 1296. The Church of England should be ashamed to admit that they allowed this piece of stolen property to remain in Westminster Abbey from that time. It must be returned to Scotland for the reopening of the Scottish Parliament which was never closed but only adjourned in 1707.”

In other words, Cherlie’s bum will be on a fake of a fake at his Coronation in London. The stonemason also said that those reappropriating the Stane thought they had broken it when dragging It on a trench coat from the English Abbey. It had in fact been broken by the Suffragettes, who tried to blow it up. Bertie repaired it and placed a wee not inside the one he returned to the resetter’s capital.

Tom Steel who produced the excellent TV series and book, Scotland’s Story: A New Perspective, wrote of the note in full. It was remarking on the fact that the royal bums were crowned on stolen property.

Jim McLean, Moris Blythman (Thurso Berwick) etc, wrote many Scottish Republican songs for the era. Jim is still alive, and his songs are being resung by Gavin Paterson and many others, including his newly revised and updated version of the wee Magic Stane, The Wee Dod o’ Stane.

It seems Cherlie is in a quandary about which titles to bestow on his dysfunctional faimily. May I humbly suggest, Lord Brigtoon, or Earl of Larkhall, or Morningside?

Donald Anderson
Glasgow

NHS Scotland has worked its socks off looking after us through a cruel pandemic and beyond. We should be proud of it. Now it is our turn to help them set up the service that we, patients, appear to desire.

I believe that Accident and Emergency waiting times would reduce dramatically if all our General Practitioners returned to seeing patients at their surgeries. Long waiting lists at A and E show that Patients feel that if they have a medical problem, they want to let a doctors examine them, not look at a “selfie” and diagnose by phone.

More troubling is the problem of “bed blocking”. Hospitals rightly will not discharge fit patients who can not manage for themselves and at present there are not enough outlets where fit but still frail folk of all ages can get the interim care they need to be able to be as self supporting as they were before they were admitted.

Geriatric hospitals already take some of the older bed blockers but there are not enough beds there either. Old folks homes will take frail patients back if they have enough trained staff to deal with them.

Bringing back “convalescent homes” staffed by physiotherapists, nurses and carers would be the best solution. But that has been made almost impossible because Brexit means that the European carers and nurses who used to power our NHS are no longer easily able to come to Scotland, while those from Asian countries are kept out by immigration rules that favour higher earners. These are wounds inflicted on us by Whitehall, which has the power to relax them but chooses not to do so.

We need to become an independent country and soon, to allow NHS Scotland to return to the well staffed and effective system it used to be.

Bettine Buchan-Hepburn
Edinburgh

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