EXC: SNP is running out of cash following an exodus of members and the legal costs linked to the police investigation into the party’s fundingNEC was told party is “having difficulty in balancing the books due to the reduction in membership and donors”https://t.co/tlelEw2BiZ
Comments
Two years ago.
Or your auditors resigned and weren't replaced for six months, leaving you in deep shit with the Electoral Commission.
The SNP were never straight with the voters of Scotland about the risks associated with independence. Why should we be surprised if they are institutionally corrupt? Questions weren't answered. They were drowned out with vituperation. This was standard operating procedure from both the party itself and its Freedom warriors.
If it is the end of the SNP as a political force, they will no doubt reform under some rock somewhere - but hopefully spending most of their timed locked in frenzied recriminations about who killed independence for decades. (Spoiler, guys: it wasn't MI5's camper van...)
Scotland undoubtedly dodged a bullet in 2014. Imagine the grift if the SNP had the full national budget to treat as its own plaything...
(*Question though: Is the SNP meeting Murrell's legal costs? If so - why?)
Do I detect a hint of irony there, Mr Eagles?
Which makes sense - Even though the party has not always been truthful (as shown by his resignation for approving lies for a start) it can probably be accepted as true given he had to loan the party 100k from his own pocket. He's obviously in a better financial state than the party.
Not nice reminder indy support is mostly steady.
I still feel like if the party were about to collapse financially theyd get a sudden influx of cash though surely? Even backers mad at them probably dont want them to go through that, or some millionaire supporter like Cox could dip into their pockets as a one off.
There has been a paucity of polls this month, not helped by the Easter break. Holidays and bank holidays are never a good time for polling accuracy so I understand why there haven't been many.
From next week onwards we need some more nationwide and Scottish polling!
I can't see that message being totally attractive to donors, to be honest. That's one reason why they're in such an awful lot of trouble.
If that trust is absent then only starting again with a fresh organisation is viable,
I've never known of a big donor who liked the thought of looking a fool.
There are three bank holidays in May - 1st, 8th and 29th
A Tennessee bill that allows students to report professors who teach "divisive concepts" passes House and Senate
The list of "divisive concepts" bars discussions on biases, white privilege and racism's role in slavery
https://mobile.twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1647349439265140741
(Also one on the 27th April. I wonder how many children will not be in on the 28th as well?)
History without divisive concepts would be an interesting challenge.
As for outlawing absurdity...
NRCC Quietly Backs Off Attacking Bud Light—Its Own Major Donor
https://mobile.twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1647354133303754758
The National Republican Congressional Committee quietly deleted a fundraising page Saturday that took aim at one of their largest donors, the parent company of Bud Light, Anheuser-Busch.
The NRCC’s backpedalling follows conservatives calling for a boycott of the beer company after they partnered with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney...
"We need you to give us money because we've done a poor job managing our money" is not an easy sell, but to avoid theindependence party from going under? There has to be someone in Scotland with so much money it doesn't matter to them.
They could try JK.
I have actually read such arguments.
The joys of living in a clergy household - you just know when The Sundays are. (Sadly not in the charts, going back to last night's pop chat.)
... Or Big_G is a time traveller and was talking about next year.
If so, can he give us some betting tips ?
Slaton has led the “anti-groomer” crusade for Texas Republicans.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1647331088849592323
Good morning, everyone.
Football: Napoli only drew at home versus Verona. Would've got nice odds on that but the idea of backing it was never something I considered.
Netflix: I see they've decided to create a documentary about Cleopatra. And think that she was black.
Right... I mean, she was Macedonian (ultra-Macedonian thanks to the Ptolemy love of incest). But there we are.
Edited extra bit: the kicker is that even if she were Egyptian ethnically, that still isn't being black.
Today is sextidi 26 Germinal in the year of the Republic CCXXXI, celebrating lilac.
https://mobile.twitter.com/sansculotides/status/1647389606348984326
The remarkable thing isn't that the 45% hasn't started to slide, it's that the blocking majority still exists.
Scottish electoral politics is stuck. For as long as the Union exists the SNP will win every single election - unless the SNP ceases to exist, in which case whatever clone is created to replace it will probably win every single election. Scotland ain't Quebec - just look at the proportion of the Scottish population that answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only," and then ask yourself how much further that value will have increased if the authorities ever get round to publishing the 2022 data. This isn't going away.
www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55409187.amp
It was just a weird pick to get worked up about accurate representation when even in the piece itself the best the moaners could do was "we dont know who her mum was so she might have been mixed race" and "reconstructions based on artefacts" might make her look mixed race.
The complaint was even more stupid as not only was it a moan that she 'might' not have been white, rather than that she definitely was not, but it said critics said an Arab or African should be cast. (I assume they meant arab or black, otherwise why specify the latter when there are arab Africans). How could they be mad about inaccurate representation when they couldn't state which would be accurate in the first place?
Must be a yacht stashed away somewhere too.
What future for these characters when Putin is not around to shill for I wonder.
Equatorial Guinea: The case count is up to 38 confirmed & probable #Marburg cases; at least 89% are dead. Authorities don't know the identify/whereabouts/disease outcome of 1 case. (shudder)
The most recent case tested positive on April 7. Not yet clear how s/he got infected...
https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1647319552575848448
Sure, looting opportunities are limited by opportunity, so nothing like the Tory Party PPE scam festival, or £10 000 per day lobbying, but even so. Is there nothing worth nicking in Holyrood?
Besides, if they were really that bothered about diversity rather than offence taking, why wouldn't they try to popularise other historical figures who have fascinating stories, and where we can be pretty confident that they were actually black - like the Nubian pharoahs of Egypt, or Queen Candace?
Who needs these namby-pamby year units anyway?
Bit like of all the things Trump has likely done the simplest potential conviction might be over his bizarre insistence of holding onto official records like a toddler who doesn't want his toys taken away, and may have committed crimes to prevent that.
...and yet it all seems like innocent come-day, go-day intra -organisational fraud when compared to a Foreign Secretary who slipped his minders to attend a party on the yacht of a former senior KGB operative with connections to Putin and the Kremlin.
Given Alba are still around, why haven't we seen a shift to their support (or have we)?
A big development with significant implications—Top Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran has recused himself from the Mar-a-Lago documents case
https://mobile.twitter.com/JesseRodriguez/status/1647267276687826944
you cannot be both lawyer and witness in a case.
Jemima and colleagues taking notes from Extinction Rebellion? A little like a poitical canvasser going to a house and while they're there, breaking a window next door to get noticed. Even the SNP would think twice.
The lecturers couldn’t handle PowerPoint AND zoom, either.
I’d been hoping to learn a lot more about the west African civilisations. Ancient Zimbabwe too!
Absolutely no way video like this would have been leaked even a few months ago. Internal discipline has fallen apart. Yousless is utterly incapable of restoring it. Nicola's team, which kept this under wraps for so long, has left the building just as the roof starts to join the floor.
Poll reveals Sunak attack ad damaged Labour’s image among voters
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/16/labour-rishi-sunak-attack-ad
Labour’s controversial “attack ad” accusing Rishi Sunak of failing to put paedophiles in prison has caused more voters to think negatively of Keir Starmer’s party than a Conservative poster that accused the Labour leader of being soft on crime, according to an Opinium poll for the Observer...
I'm not against attack ads per se, but they need to capture an essential truth (or something recognised as such), rather than just smear.
We still study African history very much from a European perspective of "discovery", even when discussing the dark side such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade or the Congo Free State.
I would expect the aim of the campaign is to get swing voters thinking along the lines of "they are all as bad as each other" on crime rather than the traditional Tories better than Labour (at fighting it, not commiting it...although could be either).
Labour strategists won't care whether people think they are nice or not, it is about making people who normally vote Tory but have had enough feel comfortable in voting in Labour.
Be nice to get the Alphabettis up on perjury charges.
Salmond is the past, and like so many fallen politicians (cough Blair) has soiled himself badly after leaving office. Surely there has to be someone else the movement can get behind?
Because if the choice is sleaze or corruption, there is no choice. People will only excuse crap government and failing services for so long no matter how they feel about independence. Especially when its vividly clear that independence is a long way off.
I suppose it does allow new names to come forward, but the total destruction of reputations is quite a phenomenon.
What is bizarre about the SNP finances is that they were being spent so recklessly. Why buy a £110k motorhome/battlebus when you can lease it? Given it cost nearly half the cash they had available it is pretty inexplicable unless there were other motives and, indeed, other funds.
...attack ads captured an "essential truth" they would be statements of the bleeding obvious ..
No, truth can be relevatory. Or make explicit something which is in the back if everyone's minds anyway.
The classic example is the "Labour isn't working" poster from decades ago.
A good attack ad is one which even its target has grudgingly to acknowledge.
I’m not going to get into the details...but, you know, just be very careful about suggestions that there are problems with the party’s finances, because we depend on donors to donate.
So..."Don't say anything bad about the finances because otherwise donors won't donate and we'll be financially screwed"? Yes, but but what is the alternative? Don't discuss it at all, or discuss mostly oral traditions and archaeology? We could surely do more of the latter, but it's not like focusing on the European perspective to some degree is unreasonable, given what can actually be looked at.
And when it comes to movies or even documentaries, a paucity of written records can be helpful for a producer - they can take more liberties for sake of a narrative, or in the case of documentaries be more speculative. So regardless of difficulty of study it should be easy to create good stories from the continent, and never a better time to pitch that to Hollywood.
Let's get some big budget Ibn Battuta movies or something, there's detailed accounts there!
Is it in bad taste? Yes
Is its impact more or less likely to see Starmer become PM? More likely