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Nicola, Queen of Scots – politicalbetting.com
Nicola, Queen of Scots – politicalbetting.com
The Scottish subsample from this week’s YouGov poll amused me immensely, obviously it is a sign that disillusionment with the SNP is such that people are now are moving over to a party that doesn’t even stand in Scotland subsamples of 143 are inherently unreliable and only people who don’t understand polling or betting rely on them.
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And first.
https://twitter.com/__ambell/status/1449349487000948745?s=21
https://twitter.com/Dimi/status/1449463897669390337?s=20
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/16/imperial-beach-california-exxon-mobil-climate-crisis
On that note, is 'Good' Morning an appropriate phrase.
Although what a supportive set of comments for someone on this page yesterday. Heartwarming.
"Today I am tresbian."
A very unexpected modern parenting moment looms
"What does that mean to you?"
"It means I'm happy"
"Ah that's nice. So what exactly were you learning?"
"French, I am tresbian."
"Ok, so the 's' is silent."
https://twitter.com/ImBuddhish/status/1448979917484474370?s=20
"the unprincipled and destructive outbursts of the recently ennobled Lord Frost in Lisbon on Tuesday evening, who seems to exist in a world entirely of his own imagining."
https://www.davidputtnam.com/viewNews/id/614/ via @DPuttnam
What I find truly astonishing is how acquiescent Labour were in that elimination. They had ruled Scotland for a very long time by being "not Tories". They seemed completely incapable of turning the guns, Singapore like, on the SNP. They still are. An offer by Douglas Ross for the Unionist parties to cooperate was immediately spurned by, *checks both internet and calendar* Sarwar who was still more interested in fighting the Tories than being eliminated.
I fear it is now too late for Labour north of the border. They are too weak to take on the SNP in their former strongholds and their former supporters have really got out of the habit of voting for them. They also have nothing of great interest to say because their policies, such as they are, are every bit as bureaucratic, centralising, public sector dominant and as indifferent to economic growth as those of the SNP.
The Tories have benefited from this suicide to the extent that they are second in Scotland and have reasonable representation in the Parliament. But there are massive areas of Scotland's central belt where most of the population live where the Tories are simply not competitive and it is difficult to see how they can be since the dominance of and reliance upon the public sector is so deeply ingrained.
The SNP took over the council for the first time in history, and by all accounts it's a disaster.
But people still vote for them.
As yea sow, so shall yea reap.
The only thing I can see ending SNP hegemony is splits within the independence movement - and while that may be happening among some activists there is very little suggestion its happening electorally.
And now, a break.
The Conservatives have 7/85. There is no opposition despite the incompetence.
The SNP have had 2 political giants in a small country in a row. The best hope for everyone else is that if Nicola does go the SNP have no one even close to her or Salmond in ability to replace her and holding it all together may prove a real challenge.
ScotRail workers will strike from November 1 to 12 amid a dispute over pay and conditions.
Meanwhile, refuse workers have also threatened to strike during the conference unless council body Cosla offers them a better pay deal.
COP26 will take place in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12 and will see tens of thousands of global leaders, activists, campaigners and protesters descend on the city
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19649555.cop26-glasgow-rail-bin-strikes-set-bring-severe-disruption-summit/
Of course it will be the Toreees fault!
The World Cup, on the other hand, is much more straightforward, I know who all the teams are and who I want to win!
... but I can’t be the only member of the House of Lords who’s become increasingly frustrated by the fact that in Parliament, as elsewhere, we no longer engage in serious ‘debate’ – we simply trade assertions.
‘Debate’ as I have always understood it, is ‘persuasion’ based on competing interpretations of evidence; and the ability to form a compelling argument and, where necessary, seek compromise.
Sadly, that’s been substituted by a ‘dialogue of the deaf, typified by the Government’s refusal to answer serious questions, or offer any well-thought-through arguments in defence of seemingly immutable positions.
Their view appears to be ‘we are the Government - take it or leave it!’
Isn't the Scottish situation simply a matter of how things are destined to be for at least the short term?
SNP aren't quite on half the vote but aren't that far off. But they have a solid anti-UK position, whereas the unionist vote is split three ways (not quite evenly, but even so). The only way, beyond (as mentioned above) SNP splitting, for this to change is by at least a semi-formal co-operative agreement between the unionists, which seems unlikely.
https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1449636362995523590?s=20
What a shock. I'm sure the government can cope with this outburst as a Labour Lord retires.
And never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the ruler of the Queen's navy.
As we should be learning from the tragic events of a couple of days ago, we need to under that disagreement needs to be polite and respectful, that opponents are misguided rather than ‘scum’, that words are not violence, but actual violence is unacceptable in a democracy.
The pandemic has ended our car sharing, plus now more irregular hours/wfh. He is a nice person, but on this we just could not agree.
KULLANE: If you’re walking in the street of Camden, if you walk in the streets of Southall or if you go to Leicester or even Birmingham you hear that young children who were here studying the religion have disappeared and gone back to Somalia.
CUFFE: So have you met parents here in Britain who say that their young people have disappeared?
KULLANE: At the moment the difficulty that we’re having with our society and diaspora is no parents are willing to come forward and say they are missing my child.
CUFFE: If parents are keeping so quiet about that, aren’t they contributing to the problem?
KULLANE: Directly or indirectly, they’re contributing it, but if they come forward and they say, “Our son has been there,” they fear some sort of a repercussion from the law, often from the country that they are being hosted.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_11_10_fo4_somali.pdf
I seem to recall it was Scott and his FBPE crowd that "enjoyed" the BS panic they sparked.
For example, Scottish Labour won most seats and votes in Scotland at every UK general election from 1964 until the SNP overtook them in 2015. At Holyrood too Scottish Labour won most seats and votes from the Scottish Parliament's creation in 1999 again until the SNP overtook them in 2007.
So unless and until Scottish Labour regains the centre left vote in Scotland, the SNP will still lead. A Scottish Labour revival would probably require a No vote in any future indyref2 to settle the independence issue for a generation. However obviously the Tories are not going to allow that any time soon given they can use the threat of a PM Starmer propped up by the SNP in a hung parliament to get their vote out in England
I despise the Heil whether they're on an issue agreeing with me or not.
I don't think there's many people here who hold up the Heil as the height of intelligent reporting. It seems to be our posters on the left that are most obsessed with it for some reason.
My god the hypocrisy and selective memory is outstanding.
Is it a bit unnecessary to describe him as being of Somalian descent, rather than mention it straight away? He was born in England.
His father, whom he lived with, was formerly an advisor to the Somalian PM apparently
https://twitter.com/avalon709/status/1449542446761848832?s=21
Your "they all look the same to me" inability to see the difference between posters on the right really makes what could be intelligent posts by you look really stupid. You'll take one thing someone said, then another that someone else said - and merge the two as "hypocrisy" as opposed to just being different people. 🤦♂️
First, pulling <1% per annum out of large estates will never bankrupt those who own them.
Secondly, do you realise how tight the planning rules are in the UK, how difficult it is to convert farmland to housing?
There's only room for one major centre-left party in Scotland. It used to be Labour, but they became incredibly complacent and took the voters for granted. Now it's the SNP, who've taken up Labour's mantle with a dose of independence on top. The SNP will remain completely dominant until either a) Scotland gets independence, b) the SNP becomes as complacent as Labour was (and Sturgeon goes), or c) the desire for independence magically dissipates. I can't see any of these happening within the next five years, maybe longer.
From what I can see there are three basic things the SNP get right.
1. National Pride. Push the image of the nation, its people and the flag at every opportunity. A small country punching above its weight against expectations
2. Having its heart in the right place. There are a list of things this government gets wrong. But they don't set out trying to screw people over or do harm.
3. They're patently less shit and less malevolent than the UK government. Stick the SNP up against a competent and less immoral UK government and perhaps they would look bad. Against make the poorest poorer and drown the immigrants, its easy to look good.
Are you implicating Starmer and the Labour Party and/or are you demanding that the suspect should be referred to as an immigrant despite the country of birth?
Whatever your point(s) they appear both irrelevant and tasteless.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/22/fuming-tory-mp-blasts-did-you-just-call-me-scum-at-angela-rayner-13462605/
Her husband's control of the SNP has helped secure her position but frankly looks a bit tin pot and is getting far more attention than it used to. It doesn't help that he is incompetent either. I think we are near the end but she needs something else to do first. She is too young to simply retire.
It seems fairly reasonable (and maybe even poetic justice) that the demographic where the enthusiats were boosting the fake narrative should fall prey to their own propaganda.
The bizarre thing is that London is perhaps the one area of the country where top quality public transport exists, combined with lower car ownership, so should be able to live mostly without cars.
I think a broader (or perhaps narrower) problem is that there are a lot of pure died in the wool recalcitrants out there digging themselves ever deeper down their rabbit holes. As things get gradually sorted out in the UK-EU relationship - one example is the EU completing their delayed electronic border / visa system in a couple of years - that group may turn eventually into an analog of the declining community in Taiwan who want to reunify with China.
Jo Cox was murdered by a far right lunatic, so its ok to be hard right and want to drown migrants and call judges the enemy, thats safe still. David Amess was murdered by a "Somali" man. So its ok to call the Tories scum, thats safe.
Or, we do the hard bit and look into ourselves. People can have different policies and idea without being seen as some kind of enemy. And yes, mea culpa I can point at some immoral (IMHO) Tory policies and call them out. That doesn't mean I think the "smirking cow" Priti Patel is evil and needs to be murdered. I just fundamentally disagree with the people who have been gaslit to support such policies.
This is not the case for Unionists, who are seeking to preserve the constitutional status quo. The changes they want to achieve necessarily require political disagreements between Unionists.
As with a lot of things there seems to have been multiple screwups here.
What does not help is whatever side sees purity in their views and abuse is acceptable.
It’s really a very gloomy scenario.
Not a single positive comment I can find on that headline in the entire thread, except for one troll subsequently banned.
I think @Casino_Royale put it best in that thread:
I hesitate to put myself in the same camp as Alastair Meeks (particularly when he's been so royally pompous, rude and condescending these past few months) but I've never taken The Express seriously.
The Daily Mail however, I do take far more seriously, and that headline makes me worry*.
(*before Remainers get excited thinking I'm agreeing with them, I don't, and I won't, but this is the sort of thing that risks being unleashed if Brexit is gleefully frustrated, or the substance of it is, even if I agree the Mail is bang out of order in stoking it)
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/1326386/#Comment_1326386
A party that has the kind of overwhelming control that Labour had in Scotland prior to 2007 (& still has in Wales today) possesses enormous amounts of power and patronage at its disposal. It really should not be easy to dislodge.
So, the SNP did a remarkable thing -- but it is also extraordinary that Labour did not see what was happening and react.
Anyhow, Scotland is in much better shape than Wales -- where we have the most corrupt political party in Western Europe, Llafur, in control of almost everything.
If you get a Tweet from someone FBPE, then the entirety of Twitter it shows is FBPE.
If you get a Tweet from someone MAGA, then the entirety of Twitter it shows is MAGA.
Opposing viewpoints are deliberately hidden, which is weird because that's what makes life (and sites like this) so interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49833804
Populism relies on inflamming opinion against "enemies within" so this fish rots from its head.
The reason is much simpler. A very large percentage of former Labour voters were in favour of independence.
If your party is implacably opposed to a policy that a large amount of your voters are in favour of you have only two options.
1) bring your voters round to your point of view with well constructed arguments.
2) call them Nazi's and watch as they abandon you and vote for party that favours their position instead.
Labour went with option 2.
It's that simple.
The vast amount of terrorism and political murder in this country is caused by Jihadis following an extremist version of Islam or the Far Right (not the mainstream right). That was what produced the killers of Jo Cox and David Amess and that is what the police and intelligence services need to focus on identifying and countering, not twatter spats between Corbynites, Brexiteers, Scottish Nationalists and FBPE diehard Remainers
How would I be implicating Sir Keir or Labour by mentioning he happened to be a constituent of his?! What planet do you live on?
And I’m saying it’s a bit unnecessary to call the murderer Somalian when he was born in England, so the opposite of what you want me to be saying so you can have a dig
You really weren’t sure, but alas went on one
0/2 try harder
A couple of summaries:
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/truth-behind-filter-bubbles-bursting-some-myths
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_social_media_driving_political_polarization
One of the interesting effects these pieces talk which people here might recognize is that people seem to get radicalized not so much by exposure to your own side of the argument but by more exposure to the stupid bastards on the other side...
Also I think you need to separate the filter bubble thing from the *emotion* thing; A big problem with the algorithms is that they optimized for *engagement*, and you get engagement by getting people riled up. (Obviously this is something tabloid journalists already knew...)
So as I understand it, Labour in large parts of Scotland assumed that as everyone voted Labour and always would, that they didn't need to bother speaking to voters and asking their opinions. So when the mood turned sharply away from the union they didn't spot it because they didn't ask.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58943245
45% of Scots will always vote SNP now as they are diehard Nationalists until they get indyref2. What seats SLab does still hold in Scotland mainly came through Unionist tactical votes.
It should forget about regaining votes lost to the SNP. It does not need them anyway to get back in power, the SNP will make Starmer PM in a hung parliament anyway.
If there is an indyref2 a generation after 2014 and No wins then Scottish Nationalism will start to drain away and SLab may be able to regain lost support. If there is an indyref2 and Yes wins then Scotland will become a foreign country and of no concern of rUK Labour who will have to become Blairite again to have any hope of winning power again in England and Wales
If you feel the need to actually post stuff on Twitter, then use a specific device that’s different from the one you use for general browsing of the site. Don’t use the logged-in device for general scrolling, unless you want the worst the algorithms can do.
Remember that they’re trying to keep you on their app, and what they call ‘engagement’ means ‘making you angry’ in practice.
Facebook is genuinely evil, and there’s now starting to be some recognition of that from lawmakers around the world.