Best Of

Musk seems to have been overdoing the drugs.
No wonder he thinks we're about to have a civil war if he genuinely believes this stuff.
https://x.com/LizWebsterSBF/status/1985096041553650036

Absolute batshittery.

Of course he doesn't believe any of it. He is saying it to divide us and it is working as he intends.

Between the rational and the sane-washers ?

It has become very clear that despite some of the Marxist Historian types might believe, that The People at The Top are not (just) a bunch of hyper rational exploiters.

They eat the same dog food - hence the various politicians we have seen who’ve gone MAGA/Bat Shit/Radicalised by social media.

I’ve encountered politicians, senior civil servants, CEOs, movers and shakers in the third sector…. All of them spouting stuff from Twatter/Tik Tok/Farcebook that is untrue to the point of physically impossible.

The SNP stopped the teaching of economics in State schools the best part of a decade ago now. This was uncharacteristically foresighted of them. If Scotland is ever to vote for independence the fewer people who have any grasp at all of economics the better.

The problems with Independence are legion. The currency is certainly one of them. So is that membership of the UK single market is vastly more important to the Scottish economy, such as it is, than the EU Single Market. So is the fact that membership of the EU is not in our gift. So is the fact that we run an even larger fiscal deficit than the UK as a whole (which is horrendous enough). So is the fact that our economy is dominated by the public sector to a completely unhealthy extent meaning that future growth is more difficult. So is the fact that we are already even more heavily taxed than the rest of the UK making investment here unattractive.

A country that was serious about independence would be running policies almost the exact opposite of what we currently have. They would be making Scotland a more competitive place to invest, build businesses and trade by reducing our taxes. They would be serious about trying to improve Scottish education instead of letting it fall ever further into decrepitude. They would drive investment in infrastructure and our road network. I think Kate Forbes knows a lot of this. Which is why she has quit.

I’ve just discovered (not personally) that we have the offence of “outraging public decency” here. Not sure if it exists in UK but it sounds magnificently Victorian.

1663, and it exists in this country.

It just sounds amusing, like someone stared too long at a lady’s ankles or was seen stroking a piano leg. Sadly it was someone pissing in public but such is life.

A few years ago a friend of mine got very drunk in a major city centre, he decided he needed a wee and went to a black wall and peed for England.

Except it wasn't a black wall, it was the darkened window of a restaurant, and he only realised when one of the waiters came out to yell at him.

I've often thought about that in the context of outraging the public decency.

Peeza Express?

I think it's funny that somehow the Scottish independence debate is expected, indeed required, to reach levels of political discourse far in excess of anything else that consists the political reality of the UK now since the Brexit campaign. Everything else has merely been cheap slogans and shouting that the other side are wrong/incompetent/shit and that your dream, your vision, is the one true path to salvation, even if you can hardly articulate what that vision is.

I mean it'd be absolutely bloody marvellous if the pro-independence side had brilliant detailed answers to the main questions (or indeed even made some effort to move their answers on from where they were in 2014), but if we've learnt anything from the last decade it's that actually you don't need any of that at all.

Yes, and a bit strange for a betting site. If the experience of the last few years is anything to go by, these wanky arguments about economics and currency and trade don't matter at all.

(and I say that as someone who wishes that wasn't the case)