The Jeggit Podcast

Conversation with Alex Salmond

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 17:22:47 GMT

We are greatly privileged to have Alex Salmond on the Jeggit podcast, the leader of the Alba Party, former leader of the Scottish National Party, and former First Minister of Scotland. What is Alba about, what can it achieve, and what is the plan for Scottish independence? In this conversation I was eager to get to the root of the man; to find out what motivates him and why he has come back to frontline politics. It was a most enjoyable natter.

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A Working Class State of Mind

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 17:59:35 GMT

Colin Burnett is a young Edinburgh short story writer who is passionate about writing in the Scots language. As he explains, Scots is the native language of the Scottish working-class people and has suffered the double oppression of being suppressed by so-called British culture and by the dominant class within Scotland. His debut title, A Working Class State of Mind, is now available for pre-order from Leamington Books and will soon be on sale in all good bookshops.

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Ross Weir for the ISP

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 22:28:03 GMT

Exactly three years ago Ross Weir and I met in the bar of the Stag Hotel in Lochgilphead in Argyll. He had come to hear Peter Bell and I speak, and now he's here to talk about his campaign to be elected to the Scottish parliament in the upcoming Holyrood elections. He has left the SNP and is now standing for the ISP. He says he left the SNP 'to get independence.'

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Christmas is Dead

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 05:25:08 GMT

Every single night, in the days and weeks before Christmas, the evening news featured someone or other representing the hospitality sector or retail; hoteliers, pub owners, restaurateurs, shop owners – people linked by class and marriage to the decisionmakers in government – telling of the woes endured by business through lockdown, as though their suffering bore the slightest relation to the suffering endured by the thousands in this country who have perished from this sickness and the suffering of their families – most of whom couldn’t even attend their loved one’s death beds or funerals. The dial on the media manipulation was turned up to full volume to ensure we could ‘save Christmas’ by easing the restrictions, opening the bars and cafes and restaurants and what have you, and getting the cash registers on the high street ringing like the bells on Father Christmas’ sleigh in time for a good ol’ fashioned family Christmas.

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New Year 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 06:08:31 GMT

Back in 2014 Scotland bought the lie that its parliament would be made permanent. That was always a lie – no Westminster parliament can bind a future Westminster parliament. That’s what Crown sovereignty means. It was such an obvious lie. But Scotland bought it, and we are now going to see just what Britain meant by 'permanent:' the permanent obliteration of Holyrood and Scottish democracy. Faced with isolation from Europe and economic ruin, Britain is not about to let Scotland – literally its oil tank – swan off into the sunset. Stop being so dim! England robbed Scotland to fund Scotland's deindustrialisation, using our oil to build the economic powerhouse that is the City of London, and now it is poised to rob whatever we have left to fund its economic isolationism. This is as plain to see as the nose on your face, but it seems that only the Scots can’t see it. Maybe we just don’t want to see it.

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It is Christmas

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 02:58:30 GMT

Isn’t this the message of Christmas; the transformation of the human story by the birth of a child – a weak and defenceless baby in the arms of a frightened mother and father? This pandemic and Christmas have this in common; they are a revelation – they uncover the little lies we tell ourselves, the falsehoods that help us feel empowered and in control. But no, we are not in control, not really. Like the Christ-child we depend on the love and care of others – because, like him, we are truly human. Our divinity, our transformation, begins only when we embrace this solidarity, the togetherness heaven shared with us that night in the City of David so long ago.

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Scottish Texan Against Trump

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 21:41:06 GMT

Speaking with Karen Wallace, a Scot who has upped sticks and moved to the great state of Texas, about life in Trump's America. This is not the America she moved to twenty years ago, she tells me. So much has changed! I wanted to get her on the podcast to tell us what it feels like to be on the ground as Texas and the United States struggle with the horrible forces Trump's administration has unleashed. Truly, this was a fascinating discussion and I hope you enjoy it every bit as much as I did. Thank you, Karen!

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Independence as Freedom

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 03:00:34 GMT

Scotland has been subjected to the worldview of colonialism; a process in which we have been culturally dominated, in a racialised class system to be subservient to the will of England to the end that we have become complicit in our own oppression and in the extraction of our own resources to the benefit of the English state. This too is colonialism, and this is what we have experienced in Scotland. No colonised society is a free society, by definition. And thus to be free we must seek to end the colonial exploitation of our country.

This is independence as freedom.

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COVID-19 and the Conspiracy Theories

Tue, 19 May 2020 22:37:54 GMT

This afternoon I was speaking with Dr Peter Ashby, a bio-medical researcher based in Dundee, Scotland, about how the various conspiracy theories growing up around COVID-19 are getting in the way of medical and governmental efforts to tackle the disease. He says that people want to believe fantastical things because it gives them comfort. Thinking that someone or some people are somehow behind this catastrophe stops them from facing the real terror that sometimes nature is chaotic and beyond our control.

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VE Day and Britain's War Mythology

Sun, 10 May 2020 02:03:46 GMT

Britain's Wartime Smokescreen in Times of Crisis: With me on the show this afternoon is Historian and former History teacher Roger Anderson to discuss VE Day; a myth, Roger says, that is being used in the midst of the present COVID-19 crisis to cover over the cracks in the British political structure. As a foundation myth, he says, VE Day and other fictions of Britain winning the Second World War is used to distract British nationalists from the realities of British state and political failure and hep them up on the goof balls British exceptionalism.

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Weaponised Antisemitism

Fri, 08 May 2020 00:57:24 GMT

The Scottish National Party and the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism This week on the show we have former Scottish National Party member and member of the party's Conduct Committee Denise Findlay on to talk about her experience of being 'resigned' from the SNP after making remarks on social media critical of the State of Israel which resulted in her being branded an anti-Semite by Channel 4 News and by a number Scottish unionist newspapers. We discuss how this highly political definition of antisemitism is being used by the State of Israel to stop legitimate criticism of its behaviour towards Palestine and the Palestinian people and how in Britain it is being employed to discredit left-wing political opponents. Buckle your seat-belts for a fascinating discussion.

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Britain's COVID-19 Suicide Mission

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:45:34 GMT

That’s it people! There’s your British government and your precious bloody union right there – a murdering psychopath! Why any reasonable person in Scotland can now imagine that our union with England, our present state of domination to the British state, is of any benefit to our people and our country is a damn mystery to me. This is not a reasonable position. It is docility to the point of complete and utter stupidity. These people are fools. They are a danger to themselves and to us – and they are a danger to the people we love who are elderly, infirm, or otherwise at risk from this awful disease.

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Easter Homily 2020

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 05:42:00 GMT

'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…' Death is real. It has its sting. It remains cold, and terrible, and frightening. Yet, we have read it a thousand times and failed to understand that we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. This gloomy valley is not our destination. We are walking through it to somewhere else. This is merely a place of interest on our journey to our destination – our true home.

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Coronavirus in Scotland

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 19:10:15 GMT

COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus 2019) is spreading in Scotland. This is an interview with a young pregnant women who was clinically diagnosed with the new coronavirus in the past few days. She tells how she is disappointed in the response of the healthcare system and the lack of awareness of this virus in her locality.

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COVID-19 Survival Guide

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 03:10:29 GMT

Hundreds dead and thousands infected across multiple continents, and the latest from the German Ministry of Health and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is that we haven’t reached the peak of the epidemic. But as Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19 continues to spread exponentially over Europe and the rest of the world, the World Health Organisation is dithering on whether or not to upgrade the warning level from Global Health Emergency to Pandemic.

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First Sunday of Lent 2020

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 23:02:04 GMT

Jesus does not recognise the borders and limitations imposed by power; foreigners – a Roman Centurion, a Canaanite woman, the powerful and the weak alike, he welcomes with open arms. This is the challenge the radical Jesus poses to modern radical politics: can we love as he loved? Can we see in the 'foreigner' – the migrant and the refugee – the image of the invisible God?

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Children and Ideological Battlegrounds

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 05:07:26 GMT

Mhairi Black has found herself right in the middle of a national fury-fest after she accompanied a drag queen to a story-telling session for children in a primary school in Scotland. There's no putting an old head on young shoulders, but this must surely tell us that it's time for a grown-up discussion about education in the country.

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Britain Reacts to Sinn Féin Victory

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 02:07:31 GMT

After decades of propagandising and anti-Irish xenophobia and racism in its press, Britain is left in a state of shock and panic at the general election result in Ireland. It can't get its head around the idea of a former colonial possession thinking for itself and doing politics not giving a hoot for Britain and what Britain thinks.

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The Provisional IRA

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 18:12:43 GMT

The revitalisation and growth of the Provisional IRA in the aftermath of the British Parachute Regiment's massacre of innocent, unarmed civilians during a Civil Rights march in Derry on 30 January 1972 - 'Bloody Sunday.'

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