[theo_luddite]

Thanks ritchie for your comments.

0762, you've had a go at me about whataboutery - you introduced it with the "what about Ireland and Norther Ireland" comments, I merely pointed out, MI5 didn't just restrict it to Ireland. If that didn't fit your narrative then I don't care, but I look beyond my borders. I've lived and travelled beyond them in business and pleasure. Maybe if you tried to include the fact that the Red Roses aren't all in love with this government once in a while rather than just rant it's Scotland v The English most of the time, when, 48% of us hate these twats down here too, you'd maybe get a bit more sympathy. As ritchie has pointed out, I get what you are trying to achieve, I don't always get what or how you're personally trying to achieve it. If you take my comments/arguments personally it's for you to worry about not me,

Hey I call it as I see it. Think you do too but don't give me the shit about not living up there either. I don't, but I work with plenty that do and I hear and discuss their opinions face to face. Beers, neeps 'n' tatties or a ruby murray follow later.

Apart from that, I probably pushed your buttons when I said "you were away with the fairies". Let me expand on that. I maybe should have said any government that "doesn't spy on it's citizens that are politically or otherwise somewhat similalry involved." However, you were taking exception to being involved in the SNP. For you to think members of the SNP should be exempt from this is beyond naiive. MI5 and others will create a file and case history on anyone involved in politics, whether elected or an agitator on the fringes. How deep that file goes depends on how much of a risk they are perceived to be. The SNP may or may not be aware of some of this, but I can guarantee, the Conservative Party at the time were well informed of what MI5 had on Harold Wilson. How is that different to what you are complaining about the SNP?

Do you seriously think nobody in the Just Stop Oil campaign hasn't come across their desk just because they are mostly English with a fondness for glueing their arses to slip roads on the M25?

Do you seriously think they didn't have a file (even if it wasn't active enough) on the nut-job that tried to blow up Edinburgh Airport? Does that go against your "no spying on the Jocks whilst the SNP are in power" lean or wasn't he an SNP member so he's fair game?

Just join the SNP and no matter how big a nut job you are, it's no hold's barred pal, your now free to do what you like? Seriously?

https://www.embassypages.com/city/edinburgh

I may have miscounted, but I make it 44 Foreign Consulates in Edinburgh alone. There will be others elsewhere (Glasgow and Aberdeen for example). Now apart from them stamping passports for visa's and visiting the occassional visitor who got him/her/itself into trouble with the local consabulary, wtf do you think some of the good folk working in these establishments are doing, if not keeping an eye on a few local political nutjobs, should it have an effect on their countries relationships with ours (and I don't just mean Scotland)?

So in your world, you're quite happy for all these countries to have far more intelligence on the (possibly dubious, but possibly just mildy political) residents of Scotland than your own Government? So that's OK then. Glad we cleared that one up.

---

Oh and by the way, nothing I said was designed to rile - how you replied was a different matter.