SNP MPs should not have sat on their hands during vote on proscription

The National

10 hours ago

Not for one moment do I believe their excuse that other groups listed as terrorist organisations needed to be proscribed, so they couldn't vote against the attacks on free speech and Palestine Action. Anyone with an ounce of sense could have argued against the vote but highlighted that it was Labour who tried to link Palestine Action with actual terrorist organisations. Why not even an amendment to remove Palestine Action from this list of suspected terrorists?
READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action – see the list
To be honest I fear the dead hand of John Swinney is behind this. It is his type of managerial politics that only annoys more people than actually standing up for a principle. No wonder the support for independence is breaking away from the stalling and falling support for the SNP. We are seeing 2003 happen all over again. One of the first things Swinney did was to repeat his failings last time as leader and spend more time and money promoting Labour politicians than the SNP's actual candidates or policies.
For more than 10 years the SNP haven't had a policy on independence, and they still claim we're closer than ever – absolute nonsense. The party is going nowhere with Swinney – the SNP needs a leader who actually wants independence and has a plan to achieve it.
The unintended outcome of this disastrous SNP position is that I will no longer contribute to any SNP election fund but will instead donate whatever the party would have received to help Palestine Action make a legal challenge to this attack on free speech.
Alex Beckett
Paisley
THE majority of MP's have no moral compass. They should have demanded, like Corbyn, a separate vote on each group. Now this fascist government can include any group it dislikes in with another clearly terrorist group, and force their supine MPs to vote in favour. Meanwhile, the IDF – which is clearly a terrorist organ of Israel, having murdered tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, even killing those starving as they queue for food – isn't sanctioned for its terrorism, but a group that sprays paint is considered as bad as the Wagner Group.
Graham Hewitt
via thenational.scot
THE Haaretz newspaper published an article titled ''It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid'. Officers and soldiers were 'ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes.'
One soldier said that civilians are 'treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas, just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.'
READ MORE: Former government lawyer to defy Palestine Action ban in Parliament Square protest
Since October 2023, IDF soldiers have shamelessly posted and bragged about their slaughter of Palestinians, even babies, on social media.
Then we have the immoral Keir Starmer calling for the criminal prosecution and de-platforming of musicians who have the moral courage to condemn this genocide. He still can't bring himself to utter the 'G''word.
Following the Glastonbury performances over the weekend by Kneecap and Bob Vylan, where the latter led the crowds in chants: 'Free, free Palestine' and 'Death, death to the IDF', Avon and Somerset police said they were assessing video evidence 'to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.'
Seriously? This is where we are. Someone insisted to me recently that what's happening in Gaza isn't a genocide but ethnic cleansing. I challenged him to explain the difference to me – he couldn't.
The UK is run by morally vacuous imbeciles. They are so beholden to the Zionist entity that they agree with the genocider-in-chief Netanyahu that an Israeli newspaper quoting IDF soldiers describing their own atrocities is antisemitic, 'designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world'.
The criminals aren't the musicians who are condemning the Zionist entity's crimes but the Western 'leaders' giving it money, weapons and political cover. They belong in Dante's seventh circle of hell, a river of boiling blood and fire, reserved for those guilty of violence against humanity.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
I AM writing this on a day when we are looking down the double barrel of supposed democracies in the USA and UK pushing hundreds of thousands of their voters into poverty and making access to healthcare and care support evermore difficult.
At a time when the Chief Rabbi of England (Zionist) is claiming chanting 'Kill the IDF' is antisemitic while the IDF killing semites in the Middle East who are waiting for food hand-outs, is not.
READ MORE: BBC drops high risk live performances after Bob Vylan Glastonbury set
We have a Chancellor who has bought the austerity, capitalist rubbish about 'trickle-down' hook, line and sinker, especially where it relates to her personal funders' wishes and directions to protect their investments and profit margins.
In the meantime we, in Scotland, are left with a party for independence that have seen the polls constantly positive to Scottish independence for more than a year, who think 'a safe pair of hands' is the way to go rather than seeking political advantage at a time when Labour and the Tories are in disarray and the UK is falling to bits as a unitary state.
Its enough to make me tear my hair out, but as I have less and less of it these days maybe it's not the time, yet.
Peter Thomson
Kirkcudbright