Baillie is an English Labour tool, squatting in and dumping on Scotland
In claiming that more defence spending will be good for Scotland, the odious Jackie Baillie reveals (if you didn’t know it already) what a Britnat tool she and the rest of the despicable English Labourites squatting in Scotland are.
Far from helping Scotland, Faslane has been horrendous for Scotland’s environment and health, something Baillie, English Labour in Scotland’s health spokesperson, is supposed to care about.
For years, the MOD has callously and regularly breached pollution rules. Faslane subs routinely discharge radioactive tritium while carrying highly flammable fuel, explosives and nuclear warheads, and the UK secretly boosted the number of nuclear warheads stored at Faslane from 225 to 260.
At Coulport, the MOD nuclear weapons storage depot, radioactive emissions of tritiated water vapour doubled between 2018 and 2023, from 1.7 billion units in 2018 to 4.2 billion units in 2023. When inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin, tritiated water vapour causes cancer and cardiovascular diseases including strokes.
Scotland’s cancer rate is 644 per 100,000, higher than the UK’s, 540 per 100,000, and far higher than the EU’s, 280 per 100,000. Don’t tell me that has nothing to do with Faslane, the cracked nuclear power plants at Hunterston and Torness, or Sellafield, the most toxic plant in Europe, which is just miles from our border. All that matters to Baillie and her English bosses is that the nuclear hazards are far from London and the southeast.
Baillie tells another lie when she says defence spending will stimulate Scotland’s economy. Most of the money will go to businesses in London and the southeast of England. BAE Systems, a happy recipient of much of the spending increase, has reported pre-tax profits of £3bn and is expecting sales of more than £30bn next year.
And the US Military Industrial Complex will be a big winner. NATO member states purchase over 2/3 of their military equipment from the US. In 2023, US arms exports to the UK were valued at $500 million, but this doesn’t include machinery and transport equipment, much of it for the military, which was valued at £19.9 billion in 2023.
Baillie refers to “our nuclear deterrent,” implying that it’s independent. It isn't. UK nukes are technically and politically dependent on the US.
The UK leases the creaking, leaking Trident subs from the US which must return regularly to King’s Bay, Georgia, for maintenance, for which the UK pays £12m a year.
Many of Trident’s systems components - the gas reservoirs of the warheads, the body shell and the guidance systems - are purchased from and designed by the US. Aldermaston, where the warheads are made, is part managed by US company Lockheed Martin, and the warheads are tested in Florida under US supervision.
As for political independence, it’s highly unlikely that the UK would use Trident without US permission. The Defence Select Committee said that the “White House has allowed the UK to maintain the facade of being a global military power,” and said that ‘the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it’.
Here’s how dependent the UK is on the US:
Baillie lies again when she says that Ukraine “gave up” its nuclear weapons. They never belonged to Ukraine, but to the Soviet Union, which always had total command and control over them.
Baillie brazenly mentions GB Energy, the shell company Starmer promised would employ 1000 workers but has employed ZERO to date, has a CEO based in Manchester, and whose sole purpose is to sell Scotland’s renewables to foreign and corporate interests. Baillie refused to lift a single chubby finger to save 3000 jobs at Grangemouth, nor, shamefully, did the Scottish administration.
Baillie’s lies and warmongering are despicable but she and Anus Sarwar are completely controlled by their London masters. There is no Scottish Labour, only English Labour in Scotland, just as there is no truly independent Scottish political party, only a colonial outpost in Holyrood.
Scots need to wake up to the fact that the only thing that will be “good for Scotland” is dissolving this toxic union and taking back responsibility for their nation.
Superb work as always. Share, share, share
Thanks Leah. Yep it's quite something when the country next door which holds the purse strings, controls defense and foriegn policy, and decides that nuke subs will be situated in your country, to the detriment of Scottish people, while telling us all, what is 'good for Scotland'.
The UK is definitley not 'good for Scotland', quite the opposite.
The list of reasons as to why England and their government do not intend to let Scotland go, is very long indeed and yet, Scotland is poor, incompetent, really cr*p at everything and takes England's hard earned cash to boot. The myth goes on and the SNP needs to step up their game and start getting the message out about the BritNat myth that Scotland is a 'subsidy junkie', when the truth is it's the other way around, England is the subsidy junkie, taking from Scotland whatever they want. :-/