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What bloody man is that! Stands Scotland where it did? – politicalbetting.com
What bloody man is that! Stands Scotland where it did? – politicalbetting.com
When Nicola Sturgeon resigned, John Swinney polled the highest of any potential candidate among SNP voters – 47% said he'd do a good job as First Minister. Watch this space for how SNP voters and the wider public rate the potential candidates to replace Humza Yousaf as FM now.. pic.twitter.com/GOws6wt2Ue
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Given his anti SNP tirade included, for seemingly no reason, at the end of Dominion, a Scottish thread header seems appropriate.
It may take me minutes to think up yet more reasons why Swinney would make Yousaf look good.
"A report by Audit Scotland in March 2021 concluded that the results of Swinney's efforts to reduce the poverty related attainment gap in Scottish education were "limited and [fell] short of the Scottish Government’s aims. Improvement needs to happen more quickly and there needs to be greater consistency across the country." In 10 Scottish council areas the attainment gap between the richest and the poorest children increased."
Also noteworthy the worst of the Pisa scores for Scotland occurred on his watch and his solution seemed to be that we wouldn't play any more.
I plan to do other threads with headlines from other Shakespeare plays.
I love Shakespeare.
With the possible exception of Hamlet. And Romeo and Juliet of course...
“The diplomacy unfolded against a backdrop of rising anxiety about deportations. Rivka Shaw, a policy officer at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, a legal advice centre, said thousands of people feared being “bundled into a van” and placed in detention.
“We’ve heard from people who are absolutely terrified,” she said. “That includes unaccompanied children who are in the asylum system [and] we’re talking about people who might have been here for two years already, living in our communities, going to our schools, possibly adults in education, volunteering, while waiting in this limbo of an asylum system.””
Looks to me like Rwanda MIGHT be working
It’s not pleasant. It’s very unpleasant. But it’s meant to be. It’s a deterrent
I like Macbeth. I don’t love it.
I’m compiling a list in my head of PBers who voted for Johnson (I won’t bother with SCon no-marks) so I can put their judgment into context. Can I put you down for BJ (as it were)?
Oh, and he was responsible for the Named Person legislation which tried to create a public official responsible for the care of each child in Scotland just in case parents got ideas above their station.
Hamlet and Macbeth are titanic
The only time I’ve cried at a Shakespeare play was Nicol Williamson playing Hamlet at the Roundhouse. It was a famous production in 1969 - I didn’t see it THERE. I was a tiny tot
But I’ve watched it on video since. Oh my days
http://everybodysreviewing.blogspot.com/2020/08/review-by-robert-richardson-of-hamlet.html
Breaking:
Yougov poll suggests there is a world in which Tories could hold *both* West Midlands and Tees Valley mayoralties - but it is very, very tight
Houchen is narrowly ahead in Tees Valley
Street is only just ahead in West Mids but Yougov says it's within margin of error too close to call
Tees Valley (poll of 924 voters)
Ben Houchen, Tory - 51
Chris McEwan, Labour - 44
Simon Thorley, Lib Dem - 5
West Midlands (poll of 1495 voters)
Andy Street, Tory - 41
Richard Parker, Labour - 39
Sunny Virk, Lib Dem - 2
I don't hold any animosity towards Swinney. I consider him utterly useless but its not personal. I am just fed up of one incompetent after another playing at running the country and failing to address our many issues. And that applies to both the UK and Scotland.
I once saw Sir Patrick Stewart play the white Othello that was amazing but there's not a Shakespeare play I don't like.
My issue with the polling is the unusually long fieldwork dates , from April 12 to 29 .
So it’s not going to pick up closer to the time movements .
*Well smugger than usual.
Stands Scotland where it did?
Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/29/rishi-sunak-latest-news-humza-yousaf-snp-scotland/
But for me, it has to be MacBeth. I don't know if it is because I am Scottish but it is as brilliant a description of a competent and capable man falling into evil as a result of over ambition as you will find in fiction and yet the Bard was subtle enough to have him cry at the end "lay on MacDuff and damned be he who cries enough". For all his evil and corruption shades of his better character remain.
It is a work of genius.
If I was going to be critical of any of them I would suggest Much ado about nothing is quite well named. I really didn't enjoy that at school.
Room for six scotches more.
Didn't help her any in the contest mind you.
I've stopped in a few too many bars today and have been chatting to other peregrinos. It actually started last night when, after dinner, I went back to the place I was staying and met a super friendly Argentinian chap
I had two or three more glasses of red than I should have. Miguel, my new buddy, kept on saying "One more for the road!", which he thought was very funny
I think I've been very lucky to get a room in the little town I'm staying. There was a very loud American guy, from Hawaii, boasting about how he'd got the last room in the place when I arrived. Either I have some special charm, there was a late cancellation, or he was bullshitting, but everyone else has been turned away since I arrived
I just had a quite lovely, but also sad, encounter with another American, James. He described himself as an Appalachian trail walker. He was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer in October
His wife told him to do everything on his bucket list, and the Camino is part of that. He's doing the walk at 10-15km per day, and wants to get home before he dies
I haven't yet met anyone who seemed happier to be here
I love The Hollow Crown too.
Falstaff is truly one of the great roles, and McKellan has never played him. Should be something!
Before anyone asks, getting a police investigation is easy these days. And like James Daly MP there is no obligation to actual state an allegation. Just that allegations have been made and its right that the police investigate the allegations, and my God, have you heard the allegations? Etc.
I never got to know Henry V at school because we didn't study it. I though Branagh's performance in that role is the best thing he's ever done.
It isn't difficult to add to the list, so long that the destruction of Khartoum hardly gets reported.
Watch this version for free here (then watch the War of the Roses)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b07bqgjn/the-hollow-crown
"taH pagh, taH be?"
Incidentally I am reading (and listening to, as I drive) a brilliant biography of Napoleon by Adam Zamoyski. Much better than the hagiographic snooze fest by Andrew Roberts
I’ve learned that Napoleon was accused of incestuously coupling with his sisters (with some evidence…)
Also that his name for Josephine’s noo-noo was “your little rascal”
And also that he was mildly obsessed with British poetry. Especially Ossian - he was insane for Ossian - and also Othello. He could quote large chunks of Othello (presumably in French)
"UK will not accept return of asylum seekers from Ireland, Rishi Sunak says
Prime minister dismisses potential deal with Dublin, increasing prospect of an escalating UK-Irish crisis"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/29/uk-not-accept-return-asylum-seekers-ireland-rishi-sunak
We need to grow a pair of cullions and accept the world is tough and cruel. The best thing we can do for these people is impose a deterrent so they stop crossing the channel and drowning (likewise the Med)
The idea the British are sadistic and xenophobic is fucking bollocks (similarly Ireland). We just accepted 1.4 MILLION migrants in 2 years. A number unprecedented in our history. And yet we have to take more people undocumented AS WELL?
Pff
I’ve been thinking on why Scottish Unionists are so terrible at coming up with an offer that appeals to voters; SLab just wait till the SNP fucks up, SCons know they’re never going to get elected to power so what’s the point, and SLDs, who cares? In the end I think it’s a mentality that depends on macro policy being set in London and they’ll get their turn, which makes even the semi-sentient ones intellectually lazy. Anas (the brown one that isn’t Humza or Aamer) after much forehead wrinkling has come up with the change Scotland needs’. That’s it, not a smidgeon of alternative policy or governance.
Latest Westminster voting intention (Scotland)
Lab: 34% (+1 from 2 Apr)
SNP: 33% (+2)
Con: 14% (=)
Lib Dem: 8% (+1)
Reform UK: 5% (-2)
Green: 4% (-1)
Other: 2% (-1)
Latest Holyrood voting intention (constituency)
SNP: 36% (+2 from 2 Apr)
Lab: 32% (=)
Con: 16% (+1)
Lib Dem: 9% (=)
Green: 3% (-1)
Other: 4% (-1)
Latest Holyrood voting intention (regional)
SNP: 31% (+2 from 2 Apr)
Labour: 28% (-1)
Conservative: 17% (+1)
Lib Dem: 8% (=)
Green: 8% (-1)
Reform UK: 3% (-2)
Alba: 3% (=)
Fieldwork conducted 26-29 Apr, all prior to Yousaf's resignation
on Brownsea in one of the little NT cottages. There was a massive storm and it was properly exciting
It’s incredible. It’s also a good thing. We don’t want a British Trump. However I suggest that HMG should really not push its luck any more, and stop relying on the relaxed good nature of the British voters - and get a bloody grip on migration, and that definitely includes the boats
Otherwise we will end up in a bad place
But anyway, lol.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1784860222806266011
Given that she's the One Who Lost To Hamza Yousaf, wouldn't the omens for her ascension be pretty poor?
Mark McGeoghegan
@markmcgeoghegan
·
36m
What is perhaps more likely is that events on Thursday and Friday have been interpreted as a problem with Yousaf, and not necessarily the SNP, among SNP voters. 40% of SNP voters in this poll wanted Yousaf removed as FM.
Puzzling. I thought it had already been played.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/25/alexsalmond
Seventy four years after everyone else I’ve finally watched The Traitors. It is incredibly clever and compulsively watchable
Is season 2 anywhere near as good?