It would be crazy not to elect Kate Forbes. I guess we'll see just how crazy SNP has become in the next few weeks...
I don't think she'll go for it, plus she could split the SNP like three different ways. Those that back her, will back her to the hilt, her constituency but she could easily alienate a good chunk of SNP voters.
I really don't buy this argument. Nothing that Salmond or Sturgeon did (before trans) left so much as a dent with SNP voters, because the overriding issue for SNP voters is Scotland, either because they support separation, or because of a more general feeling that Scotland is being done down and needs defending within the Union. That will continue to an extent under whomever succeeds Sturgeon, and it is delusional to think that Labour could move the dial by trying to weaponise Forbes' Christianity. On the contrary, it is likely that her views could see her win voters and activists back from Alba.
Whether her accession would offend some within the party is a different matter entirely.
The other factor to bear in mind is that - contrary to persistent PB Unionist belief - the SNP or whatever 'Nats' means are not the same thing as the pro-independence movement. You need to include the SGs and a fair chunk of the Labour vote even at present. It's incredibly naive to compare the Yes and the SNP votes as if they were one and the same, yet we have someone on PB who did this only today.
most do it all the time , ignorance and arrogance abound.
Once again I am struck by how difficult the DM online is to read - there's a pop-up ad in the bottom right corner, flashing ads columns left and right, scrolling down through the article you get more links and ads than article.
How is it so popular?
It's The Sidebar of Shame that makes it popular.
They'll juxtapose an article denouncing gay marriage with a picture of a lesbian supermodel and her girlfriend, scantily clad.
They clearly have worked out that what they do works as it’s a ridiculously popular website. They have strange traits where they will always put the word “very” in capitals in a headline about some famous lady in a “VERY revealing dress”. They also cannot seem to write an article about a person without mentioning their guessed wealth or the value of a house.
Everyone is a “star” including fourth division footballers and reality contestants you haven’t heard of.
Then there is the litany of stories about something which only seem to make the paper because the person, or rather young lady, involved is good looking and has attractive or scantily clad social media posts to go alongside the story.
The they do the pay articles where you get two weeks of Emma Forbes or some other vaguely remembered celeb on the beach in Barbados every day.
I guess the readership love looking at these people and being jealous or judgemental so click to read about someone they want to hate.
I have wondered if the Mail hadn’t gone big on Nicola Bulley would she just be another missing woman in a local headline - and my cynical side says they went big because of how she looked - my sister looked up how many people went missing around the same time and there were lots but they weren’t photogenic middle aged suburban white women.
It doesn't require a great deal of cynicism to note a widely acknowledged phenomenon that more attractive people tend to get news stories about them in the media.
Having the Sindy string to their bow has to be of help I assume. In rUK they only have environmentalism (which all the big parties are getting into) and far leftism.
My deeply cynical suspicion of them is that they're not really all bothered about independence, but pay some lipservice to the concept because they found there was a bit of an open goal niche for them to occupy with it, especially with the Holyrood list vote component.
I also find them irritating in the way they are a sort of SNP-lite wannabe, like that civ in the Culture who really really want to be the Culture but also think they're slightly better than the Culture (is it the GFCF or suchlike?).
In party political analogies it's probably not one that gets made very often to be fair, but I am cynical about everything.
I used to think that too: that their pro-independence stance was a little superficial. I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that they really mean it.
A significant minority of Scottish Greens would prefer Devo Max, but my guesstimate is that they are only about 10% of the members. Absolute max 20%.
They took the positive, concrete, step of separating from the Green Party in England. I'm not sure why you'd bother to do that if you didn't really believe in Independence.
Given the roasters in it they would not have lasted 5 minutes if under any sort of real party.
ON topic, I wonder if - counter-intuitively - we might see the SNP stabilize in the polls, or even benefit from a slightly uptick
The reason? Patriotic Scots will clamour to the defense of THE patriotic Scotch party as everyone else - especially the Hunnish yoons - scoffs at Sturgeon’s departure and her failure on Indy. For the same reason we might see an uptick in Yes
it’s the same paradoxical psychology which saw a surge to the Nats after Scotland voted NO
However, unlike that earlier paradoxical uplift, I don’t expect this one to last. Sturgeon’s departure IS a blow, and she was a unifying figure in what is a deeply divided party, I can’t see any of the aspiring candidates matching her ability in this way - Forbes is too right wing and Wee Free, Robertson is too boring and tainted, etc
There will surely be tartan blood on the carpet. So the Nats will eventually suffer for this, and the YES vote might enter a gentle but less spectacular decline
I think that support for the SNP will either go down or go up, with a chance that it stays exactly the same. You heard it here first.
You describe the multiple prediction PB aftertimers very well. ‘We shall see’ is always a tell.
Ignoring the largely uninteresting & low information discussion of SNP personalities and internal politics which I tend to do, it’s quite noteworthy the obsessive and endless quality of the coverage of the issue, from the BBC, the tabloids and right down to this muddy puddle - ‘We go live to Huw Edwards outside Holyrood mouthing clichés’.
For better or worse (probably worse) the SNP = Scotland in a lot of people’s heads, most of them very unsympathetic to the SNP.
I suspect the SNP is simply too far gone, too much of a Sturgeon personality cult to use her departure as a chance to ask where things went wrong. Forbes could offer a change of tone and direction, but the party members may still be more interested in looking for bigots and traitors than converts. Far easier to choose a Sturgeon “continuity” candidate to keep marching angrily down the road of fantasy and factionalism, disaggregation and defeat. As a unionist, I can but hope.
Murrels are fixing the vote so Macbeth and his wife ascend to the throne as they planned. Their tame NEC have already made sure no-one outside the clique has a chance to mount any campaign. If Robertson gets it then the SNP is dead and it will remain a mafia.
There weren’t any details in the article, but expropriation is a dangerous path to tread
Not clear how it works at all. Also a 500% increase in council tax for empty homes. Disproprortionately affects the poor rather than the rich. And a real issue for people in hospital. Logically also applies to holiday homes as well (otherwise someone goes and stays in it 1 night a year). Interesting.
It sounds a bit PR Stunt / Populist.
1 - £1 selling off is more Thatcherite than Thatcher's 50% or 60% discount on Council houses. 2 - It will be marginal as we have already spent 20 years cracking down on empty homes. 3 - How do they stop investors striking formal or informal back to back deals? SNP had problems with that, with council houses being sold off to English investors. 4 - Would they generally not be better pulling them into the social sector as rentals for the people on the waiting list? 5 - What about the significant % of empty homes that are owned by Councils / HAs?
It will, however, galvanise the owners of those homes into action.
1 - These are not in the main council houses AIUI. Edit: I see what you mean. Maybe GeoffW can get his Thatcherite wish by voting SLab ;-) 2 - 27,000 empty houses is the number quoted. 3 - Clauses in the contract? 4 - Yes 5 - Really? Are there any? Here in Dorset HA homes are like hen's teeth - massive waiting list, no empty homes AFAIK.
That 27K is almost exactly 1% of all dwellings in Scotland, and about a third of all empty homes.
I wonder if they got that 27K by rounding down from the stat on page 13
But this refers to the covid era with delays in processing legalities and so on. On the next page they say "(The spike in the percentage of long-term empty properties in 2020 may reflect the impact of Covid lockdown restrictions, for example with fewer people moving house in that period.)"
Better data - thank-you.
Looking at it, Total Empties in Scotland for 2021 is ~88,000 or 3.3%. Exemptions on top of that (eg not yet finished or awaiting demolition) are ~44,500 or 1.7%.
In England the Total Empties figure for 2022 is 676,500 which for 25 million dwellings would be around 2.5%. These are "defined as empty properties as classified for council tax purposes and include all empty properties liable for council tax and properties that are empty but receive a council tax exemption. "
The definitions look fairly comparable ie based around Council Tax.
Scottish Gov breaks down the numbers by short term / long term, but not by ownership.
The total Long Term empties in Scotland are stated as 43,766, with a definition of 6 months empty. I'm guessing the 27k number is either >12 months empties or private rented sector empties, with Lab ignoring social sector - which would be consistent with their usual policy practice around non-habitable and LLs evicting and so on, where they quiet about how much HAs use Section 21 for example.
Total empties in Scotland are quoted as 88, 735, which is 3.3%.
Make of all that what you will.
Digging into this is a rabbit hole.
FPT
But the figures are not huigely different given the uncertainties, and note the markedly better Scottish output of council houses. It'll be interesting to see why Labour don't advocate the same policy in England, or for that matter Wales. They're a UK party without divisions (vide Elec. Comm.).
Nice trolling on the lying cheating scumbag Labour party.
Morning, Malky. Pishing it down here.
The figures seem very odd as discussed a bit later on. Can't imagine Labour wanting to do a super-Thatcher and give away cooncil hooses for £1 a time. But that's what the number quoted implies.
There are multiple housing crises.
1) Prices 2) Homelessness of the “living in temporary, horrible accommodation” kind 3) Homelessness of the “sleeping under cardboard in the street” kind Etc
Politicians are obviously attracted to superficial, cool sounding ideas, that have low cost for their budgets and appear To Be Doing Something.
1) actually requires building millions of homes. Which costs money and will upset lots of people 2) Same 3) requires a big investment in mental health in the community. And probably a massive change in how we treat/deal with the people in question. Oh, and at the end of that, you’ll probably have people sleeping on the street.
If a system is running at 95%+ of capacity, it is stressed. Attempting to get that number to 98% or whatever will, ultimately, make things worse.
In my location just shy of a quarter of a million and, 837 bus stops, 0 tram stops, and 12 metro and train stops.
That is fun. Current house: 1,767 people Previous house: 184,139 people
Which rather neatly explains why I moved!
Using 5km I moved from 638,000 to under 15,000 !
I grew up in South London (783,000 within 5km on 2015 figures). Currently living within 5km of 1,707. One of the houses on our shortlist is within 5km of 145 people.
Having the Sindy string to their bow has to be of help I assume. In rUK they only have environmentalism (which all the big parties are getting into) and far leftism.
My deeply cynical suspicion of them is that they're not really all bothered about independence, but pay some lipservice to the concept because they found there was a bit of an open goal niche for them to occupy with it, especially with the Holyrood list vote component.
I also find them irritating in the way they are a sort of SNP-lite wannabe, like that civ in the Culture who really really want to be the Culture but also think they're slightly better than the Culture (is it the GFCF or suchlike?).
In party political analogies it's probably not one that gets made very often to be fair, but I am cynical about everything.
I used to think that too: that their pro-independence stance was a little superficial. I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that they really mean it.
A significant minority of Scottish Greens would prefer Devo Max, but my guesstimate is that they are only about 10% of the members. Absolute max 20%.
They took the positive, concrete, step of separating from the Green Party in England. I'm not sure why you'd bother to do that if you didn't really believe in Independence.
Just taking a wild stab in the dark - because those holding the purse-strings required it?
Which people holding which purse strings you crazy conspiracist loon?
The SNP have provided Scotland's Government for many years now. During that time, opinions and positions on independence in Scotland's civil service, quangos, and all other grant-funded bodies, plus the media, have shifted, going with the flow of patronage. The green party and the organisations that it overlaps in interests and personnel is no different. You don't have to be a 'conspiracist loon' to recognise the influence of self-interest in politics, just not be a slack-jawed dribbling moron.
What an utter load of drivel.
Dunce's corner for you yet again. When you have no clue it is best to keep quiet rather than prove you know nothing.
Baffled at the notion reading Lord of the Rings is indicative of an extreme right wing political ideology.
Or Shakespeare.
JRRT was a fervent Catholic, tory, General Franco fan boi and monarchist. Put all those together and it's a very short and convient commute to fascism.
LotR is very important to Third Position Italian fascism with the books being seen as an explicit rejection of Marxist cultural values that would appeal to young people. Of course, we now all know that Marxist cultural values are infinitiely superior to all others. The magazine of the women's section of MSI, the progenitor party to Fratelli d'Italia now helmed by fascist mega-Karen Giorgia Melonia, was called 'Eowyn'.
There is truth in this. Giorgia Meloni is an avowed fan of JRR Tolkien (also Roger Scruton)
Tolkein's work also got taken up in a big way by the 60s hippy counterculture in America and, to a much lesser extent, here.
Pinning political labels on works of art that aren't explicitly political can lead people in surprising directions.
I always thought LotR was a scathing polemic against the evils of fascism. Shows how little I know, eh?
He did write that foreword trying to be firm the work was not allegorical, but talking about its applicability instead, to explain how it could be interpreted so, but I don't think it convinced many.
Having the Sindy string to their bow has to be of help I assume. In rUK they only have environmentalism (which all the big parties are getting into) and far leftism.
My deeply cynical suspicion of them is that they're not really all bothered about independence, but pay some lipservice to the concept because they found there was a bit of an open goal niche for them to occupy with it, especially with the Holyrood list vote component.
I also find them irritating in the way they are a sort of SNP-lite wannabe, like that civ in the Culture who really really want to be the Culture but also think they're slightly better than the Culture (is it the GFCF or suchlike?).
In party political analogies it's probably not one that gets made very often to be fair, but I am cynical about everything.
I used to think that too: that their pro-independence stance was a little superficial. I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that they really mean it.
A significant minority of Scottish Greens would prefer Devo Max, but my guesstimate is that they are only about 10% of the members. Absolute max 20%.
They took the positive, concrete, step of separating from the Green Party in England. I'm not sure why you'd bother to do that if you didn't really believe in Independence.
Just taking a wild stab in the dark - because those holding the purse-strings required it?
Which people holding which purse strings you crazy conspiracist loon?
The SNP have provided Scotland's Government for many years now. During that time, opinions and positions on independence in Scotland's civil service, quangos, and all other grant-funded bodies, plus the media, have shifted, going with the flow of patronage. The green party and the organisations that it overlaps in interests and personnel is no different. You don't have to be a 'conspiracist loon' to recognise the influence of self-interest in politics, just not be a slack-jawed dribbling moron.
The Scottish Green Party were founded in 1990. Not much money or self-interest in it then.
Er, that doesn't work. The Greens were always there, but split into E&W, NI and S parties at that time to better match the respective parliaments then newly present. They do believe in devolution!
There was a UK Green Party and the Scottish members demerged to form their own party in 1990 - long before the Scottish Parliament was re-established.
The position of the Welsh Greens is somewhat anomalous.
The bookies' favourite to be Scotland's next First Minister, Angus Robertson, oversaw Scotland's disastrous census last year. Then there's this from this month..…
Paper trail shows Scot Gov's Angus Robertson used dodgy wind power stat in charm offensive with French ministers (& in newspaper columns & at SNP conference) AFTER his officials were repeatedly told by fellow civil servants the figure couldn't be evidenced…
Angus Robertson was also dragged into the Salmond affair.
My point being that Angus has some baggage, which will come under much scrutiny if he does stand to be SNP leader/First Minister.
Other, 'new generation' candidates may capitalise on this
As also noted upthread, Prevent is a bit rubbish, but that’s a different problem.
Anyone who thinks the far right doesn't pose a serious security threat is delusional.
A feature of the British far right is that its members are stupid and inept.
A typical specimen is “Mr Waffen SS UK”, who tried to use social media to create a terrorist movement. He was a morbidly obese incel, who spent most of his life in his bedroom eating junk food.
The US, Italian, or French far right, OTOH, are serious players.
It's where British incompetence works in our favour, for once.
There weren’t any details in the article, but expropriation is a dangerous path to tread
Not clear how it works at all. Also a 500% increase in council tax for empty homes. Disproprortionately affects the poor rather than the rich. And a real issue for people in hospital. Logically also applies to holiday homes as well (otherwise someone goes and stays in it 1 night a year). Interesting.
It sounds a bit PR Stunt / Populist.
1 - £1 selling off is more Thatcherite than Thatcher's 50% or 60% discount on Council houses. 2 - It will be marginal as we have already spent 20 years cracking down on empty homes. 3 - How do they stop investors striking formal or informal back to back deals? SNP had problems with that, with council houses being sold off to English investors. 4 - Would they generally not be better pulling them into the social sector as rentals for the people on the waiting list? 5 - What about the significant % of empty homes that are owned by Councils / HAs?
It will, however, galvanise the owners of those homes into action.
1 - These are not in the main council houses AIUI. Edit: I see what you mean. Maybe GeoffW can get his Thatcherite wish by voting SLab ;-) 2 - 27,000 empty houses is the number quoted. 3 - Clauses in the contract? 4 - Yes 5 - Really? Are there any? Here in Dorset HA homes are like hen's teeth - massive waiting list, no empty homes AFAIK.
That 27K is almost exactly 1% of all dwellings in Scotland, and about a third of all empty homes.
I wonder if they got that 27K by rounding down from the stat on page 13
But this refers to the covid era with delays in processing legalities and so on. On the next page they say "(The spike in the percentage of long-term empty properties in 2020 may reflect the impact of Covid lockdown restrictions, for example with fewer people moving house in that period.)"
Better data - thank-you.
Looking at it, Total Empties in Scotland for 2021 is ~88,000 or 3.3%. Exemptions on top of that (eg not yet finished or awaiting demolition) are ~44,500 or 1.7%.
In England the Total Empties figure for 2022 is 676,500 which for 25 million dwellings would be around 2.5%. These are "defined as empty properties as classified for council tax purposes and include all empty properties liable for council tax and properties that are empty but receive a council tax exemption. "
The definitions look fairly comparable ie based around Council Tax.
Scottish Gov breaks down the numbers by short term / long term, but not by ownership.
The total Long Term empties in Scotland are stated as 43,766, with a definition of 6 months empty. I'm guessing the 27k number is either >12 months empties or private rented sector empties, with Lab ignoring social sector - which would be consistent with their usual policy practice around non-habitable and LLs evicting and so on, where they quiet about how much HAs use Section 21 for example.
Total empties in Scotland are quoted as 88, 735, which is 3.3%.
Make of all that what you will.
Digging into this is a rabbit hole.
FPT
But the figures are not huigely different given the uncertainties, and note the markedly better Scottish output of council houses. It'll be interesting to see why Labour don't advocate the same policy in England, or for that matter Wales. They're a UK party without divisions (vide Elec. Comm.).
Nice trolling on the lying cheating scumbag Labour party.
Morning, Malky. Pishing it down here.
The figures seem very odd as discussed a bit later on. Can't imagine Labour wanting to do a super-Thatcher and give away cooncil hooses for £1 a time. But that's what the number quoted implies.
Morning Carnyx, ry here now but had heavy rain and gales all night. That si just the usual Labour lying. If they do it the houses will all go to members and friends as they used to do. Scottish labour of old make the Tories look honest.
Mr. Leon/Mr. Doethur, linguistically, Tolkien uses many sources (I believe Gandalf and some dwarf names are lifted straight from Norse mythology).
My understanding is the works were made to fill a gap in an English mythology (unlike the Celts, Norse, etc) and Tolkien disliked direct allegory. So, Sauron is emblematic of evil but not a specific individual, people, or nation.
Sauron is based on Sour Ron, who used to run a local Oxford chip shop. Tolkien couldn’t stand the bloke. The LotR is based on a decade long feud over a picked egg.
Tale as old as time, that's why it resonates with people.
Mr. F, cheers. Been a while since I've read the book. Was considering doing it but decided to re-read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn first (almost done with the third of four volumes).
If you can make it past the first two hundred pages of the first book, that is a very good series.
Not read that but his Otherland series was...weird.
As also noted upthread, Prevent is a bit rubbish, but that’s a different problem.
Anyone who thinks the far right doesn't pose a serious security threat is delusional.
You could justifiably argue that religious extremism could be characterised as far right, too.
No it's religious fanaticism. And I'm not sure 'extremism' is that helpful a term either. I'd far rather that we were focused on gross intolerance that might lead to violence. Far right might be the sort of term where 'you know it when you see it' but that's isn't much good when you are dealing with public policy and the law.
I'm happy to offer 20-1 on Cole-Hamilton if anyone wants to throw their money away.
He would be poor value at 500/1.
That figure for Cole-Hamilton stood out for me. The only possible situation for it to happen is if the unionist parties got a majority, Lab and Con could not agree on a FM and C-M was the compromise.
Baffled at the notion reading Lord of the Rings is indicative of an extreme right wing political ideology.
Or Shakespeare.
JRRT was a fervent Catholic, tory, General Franco fan boi and monarchist. Put all those together and it's a very short and convient commute to fascism.
LotR is very important to Third Position Italian fascism with the books being seen as an explicit rejection of Marxist cultural values that would appeal to young people. Of course, we now all know that Marxist cultural values are infinitiely superior to all others. The magazine of the women's section of MSI, the progenitor party to Fratelli d'Italia now helmed by fascist mega-Karen Giorgia Melonia, was called 'Eowyn'.
There is truth in this. Giorgia Meloni is an avowed fan of JRR Tolkien (also Roger Scruton)
Tolkein's work also got taken up in a big way by the 60s hippy counterculture in America and, to a much lesser extent, here.
Pinning political labels on works of art that aren't explicitly political can lead people in surprising directions.
The fact that Michael Moorcock detests Tolkien must say something in his favour.
Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and a supporter of the Spanish nationalists. He also hated European imperialism and anti-semitism. He doesn’t fit easily anywhere on the political spectrum.
Such nuance washes thin today, though.
He'll still be labelled, whether it's fair or not.
There's a strong anti-imperialist theme in LOTR, most obviously with the Downfall of Numenor. But, also, it's clear that Saruman and Sauron can stir up the peoples of Dunland and Harad respectively, precisely because both peoples have genuine grievances against Rohan and Gondor.
The bookies' favourite to be Scotland's next First Minister, Angus Robertson, oversaw Scotland's disastrous census last year. Then there's this from this month..…
Paper trail shows Scot Gov's Angus Robertson used dodgy wind power stat in charm offensive with French ministers (& in newspaper columns & at SNP conference) AFTER his officials were repeatedly told by fellow civil servants the figure couldn't be evidenced…
Angus Robertson was also dragged into the Salmond affair.
My point being that Angus has some baggage, which will come under much scrutiny if he does stand to be SNP leader/First Minister.
Other, 'new generation' candidates may capitalise on this
Comments
Ignoring the largely uninteresting & low information discussion of SNP personalities and internal politics which I tend to do, it’s quite noteworthy the obsessive and endless quality of the coverage of the issue, from the BBC, the tabloids and right down to this muddy puddle - ‘We go live to Huw Edwards outside Holyrood mouthing clichés’.
For better or worse (probably worse) the SNP = Scotland in a lot of people’s heads, most of them very unsympathetic to the SNP.
NEW THREAD
1) Prices
2) Homelessness of the “living in temporary, horrible accommodation” kind
3) Homelessness of the “sleeping under cardboard in the street” kind
Etc
Politicians are obviously attracted to superficial, cool sounding ideas, that have low cost for their budgets and appear To Be Doing Something.
1) actually requires building millions of homes. Which costs money and will upset lots of people
2) Same
3) requires a big investment in mental health in the community. And probably a massive change in how we treat/deal with the people in question. Oh, and at the end of that, you’ll probably have people sleeping on the street.
If a system is running at 95%+ of capacity, it is stressed. Attempting to get that number to 98% or whatever will, ultimately, make things worse.
The position of the Welsh Greens is somewhat anomalous.