No true Scotsman – politicalbetting.com
No true Scotsman – politicalbetting.com
A challenge facing both Morgan and Sarwar is many worry they wouldn't put Wales/Scotland's interests first against the wishes of Labour in Westminster. But Sarwar does score a little higher on this metric, esp with Lab 2024 voters and may be benefitting from distance with the PM pic.twitter.com/NnKrbsIHR5
0
Comments
(Today's obvious mistake testing whether we actually read the thread headers, natch)
When you compare the 2024 election with the last Holyrood election there is a massive swathe of constituency seats that should fall to Labour with a fairly uniform swing. Swinney has been awful as First Minister if not as catastrophic as his 2 predecessors largely because he avoids doing anything at all if he can possibly help it. He should be an easy target for a disgruntled electorate but it is not easy to see who is going to be firing the shot at the moment. Labour are in the Straits of Hormuz, Reform in Scotland make Reform in the rest of the UK look organised and professional, Alba probably won't even stand because they have run out of money and the Tories are coming off a remarkable high point for them and are likely to be slaughtered. And the Greens? Well, their period in government was apocalyptic.
The SNP may be atrocious but there is the lack of a credible alternative.
Good morning, everybody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(biology)
The band's namesake, the tongue-in-cheek social theory of "de-evolution", was an integral concept in their early work, which was marked by experimental and dissonant art punk that merged rock music with electronics.
OK, we weren't defending any seats.
However, we did lose two thirds of our vote share in a couple of wards, so no sign of an Iran bounce there.
Here’s a fawning encomium from the Scotch correspondent of the supposedly leftish New Statesman (can’t put a link up cos he’s blocked me).
Mercedes driver George Russell has accused Ferrari of being "selfish" and "silly" in blocking change to the rules to improve safety at starts.
Last week's opening race in Australia saw a large deviation in start performance across the grid. The worst incident involved a near-miss when Alpine driver Franco Colapinto narrowly avoided smashing at high speed into the back of the slow-moving Racing Bull of Liam Lawson.
Russell said governing body the FIA had looked to modify the rule that led to those problems but said Ferrari were blocking it, without naming them.
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc leapt into the lead at the start in Melbourne from fourth on the grid, emphasising the impression that the Italian team have the best starts this year.
Russell said the problems were caused by a "very quirky rule" that limits the amount of energy a car can harvest on the formation lap.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/cz6ezxyq359o
In Liverpool.
*Titter*
Russell just wants the start changing because Ferrari designed their engine better. Ferrari even pointed out the problem a year earlier and designed a smaller turbo for that reason. Nobody stopped other engine manufacturers doing the same.
What's truly remarkable is how many still think the SNP will improve the lives of people like me, despite the fact they don't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQlmZJkbBk
A bit self serving to try to negate that of their closest competitor.
Russell is a very fine driver, but not easy to earn to.
He enjoys sticking it to Verstappen, which is a point in his favour.
Might mean if a Mercedes gets stuck behind a McLaren it could find it harder to pass. And, off the line, Ferrari are still in with a shout. Plus, if Bearman starts well that could push Verstappen out of the points positions, and I think the Red Bull's tyre wear could hurt it too.
You don't really give a shit about their effectiveness in governing the Scottish people or improving their daily lives.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cxRZG6OMHX8
Collective punishment is wrong; it also helps Hezbollah, which is more isolated than ever domestically in Lebanon, facing unprecedented popular fury even inside the Shia sect, for dragging Lebanon into war. Collectively punishing the Lebanese may push more of them toward supporting "resistance" in the face of indiscriminate aggression.
https://x.com/LizHurra/status/2032347611487687055
In both 2016 and 2021 the SNP did worse than the final Holyrood polls indicated, you have to go back to 2011 to find the last time they did better and Swinney is no Salmond and the SNP are not a fresh opposition party but nearly two decades in power
Ukraine is helping us with Iranian drones, resulting from the war we launched against Iran.
And we're easing sanctions on Russia because of the oil market fallout from the war we launched against Iran.
And Russia is helping Iran with medical aid and intel, in the war we launched against Iran.
And Trump is frustrated with Ukraine because it's still at war with Russia.
https://x.com/samstein/status/2032276902535184694
Scottish voters are so convinced that plu don't really give a shit about effectiveness in governing the Scottish people or improving their daily lives that your party hasn't won a general election of any stripe in Scotland for 70+ years.
At least a million Lebanese are already displace by the latest raids. And several hundred dead.
The genocidal cnut has no brake, no off buttom, its genicide of Arabs, full stop.
He'll use the tired old "weeding out the terrorists" to carpet / blanket bomb anything that stands up. Just look at Gaza.
They won't let anyone in and they wil quite happilly build a massive buffer zone around Israel.
The time has to come when he is hunted down, taken out and until he is, Israel must be sanctioned and ostracised in the same way as Russia. He is no better than Putin, in many ways he is far worse than Putin.
The tax rate hurts but I'm unusual for earning enough for this to have a material effect on my finances. The same goes for LBTT, which is going to really piss me off in a couple of years time. But for most people, these aren't big issues - and any wonkish remarks about Barnett fall flat when you consider how much energy we export over the border (now on my 3rd SNP leaflet pointing this out).
You don't have to be a nationalist fanatic to support the SNP. Most people aren't.
- there's a referendum to rejoin the EU in the late 2030s. Yes wins convincingly but not overwhelmingly and the government makes such a mess of the negotiations that membership quickly becomes unpopular again
- sometime in the second half of the century, our birthrate becomes so disastrous and is so immune to government meddling that the taboo against human cloning breaks down
- the follies and disasters of the Trump years are so obvious even to most Americans that America becomes a fairly reliable partner again after he goes
- Putin is succeeded by someone a bit less aggressive internationally, but just as corrupt internally. Russia stops menacing its neighbours but never reckons properly with its past
- after Xi Jinping dies, the Chinese realise that become a developed country is impossible without economic liberalisation. The Communist Party try to keep the process under control and avoid political liberalisation but fail and are deposed. China becomes a civilised country like a bigger Taiwan or Singapore.
- the AI "revolution" is not nearly all it's cracked up to be, especially in the jobs market. Some jobs are eliminated or simplified, but others become more complicated
- understanding consciousness remains elusive for the next century at least.
Of course these aren't projections, just things that could happen.
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
What on earth have you had for breakfast
Reform most Senedd members !!!!!!!!
I would remind you their former leader is in jail for bribery to make pro -Russia statements in the European Parliament and that far right little englander Farage wants to abolish the Senedd
As far as labour are concerned they are out of time and now caught up with the Chinese spying scandal
Plaid will be the clear winner on the night and Reform will underperform, much as I expect in Scotland
BBC News - First minister responds to China spy arrests as three named
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4553g7lr1o
Every week that passes and I am forced to use it again I’m convinced it’s useless slop.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/2029935209454420141?s=20
The Scotland work was only ever compelling impact case study involving government involvement. The other clear one I had was UK and change happened through a professional body rather than government directly.
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0313/1563169-ireland-uk-summit/
On the one hand, Ireland is desperate for help with maritime security, and is going to Britain for that help, a country with a Navy that is so stretched that it had to rush a warship out of dry dock to defend its base on Cyprus, but Ireland's capabilities are so much less that help from Britain represents a lifeline.
On the other hand, Britain's economy is in such a woeful state in terms of generating investment and attracting investment that they are delighted with investment of under a billion euro from Irish companies into Britain, that will generate fewer than a thousand new jobs. No word on British companies having the spare capital to invest in Ireland.
The agreements are doubtless Good Things, but they are revealing of the major weaknesses of each country and the long-term failure of each country to deal with those weaknesses.
I still don’t see Labour keeping its losses to one third of the seats it is defending, while losing half its vote share. And, I’d expect the Lib Dem’s to do better than a 12% vote share.
https://www.pollcheck.co.uk/locals-2026
Two things get in the way, SFAICS, of a broadly progressive view of evolution. The first is that what counts for survival may have little or no link with the capacity hold centre left politics, to work out general relativity or write sonnets or be a helpful and kind person; secondly that medically interfering with nature's tooth and claw processes, as we do - me included, that's why I lived to reproduce - would seem to work against the progress view.
Biology and progress may well be at war. In the long run I am sure which one will win. Meanwhile, enjoy the trip.
As civilisation teeters on the brink (apparently), it's Gold Cup day at Cheltenham and more controversy yesterday.
Today's pointless musings as follows:
Triumph Hurdle: MAESTRO CONTI
Mares Chase: DINOBLUE
Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle: KAZANSKY (each way)
Gold Cup: THE JUKEBOX MAN
In the past week based on a unique idea I had of how to solve a ML problem (which is the classic supervisor here's an idea to a PhD student) it has implemented a working solution, it has used Karpathy's autoresearch idea to optimse for a high quality machine learning architecture (that was significantly better than what would be prior standard), uncovered a novel way of doing something, set up all the tests and visualisations, written what could easily be turned into an academic paper on it and then it made slides for a 15 mins talk based upon the "paper".
All working, demos, results, paper, slides. One week. That would take high quality PhD 6-12 months at least even if the supervisor gave them the outline of the solution.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/2029608254834159867
If Sarwar did it he missed.
https://britain.votes.now/local-elections/may-26
Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes, according to three sources familiar with the closed-door session.
Your moral compass is completely broken.
The Cambodian genocide by Pol Pot, were skulls were literally piled high led to between 2 - 3 million deaths and a quarter to a third of the population wiped out.
Putin invaded a free, democratic country that was neither threatening nor attacking Russia in a pure unadulterated war of aggression.
Netanyahu's Israel has only fought against groups or countries that attacked Israel first.
You may not like the way the wars are fought, that is reasonable. But to suggest that it is as bad as Pol Pot, or worse than Putin, says you are either being completely ignorant of what the latter two did or you have a very broken moral compass.
The meek shall inherit the Earth - buy not until those who are dumb as a brick have trashed it.
By Aerospace Inflation World, I mean the apparently never ending cycle of higher costs and less capability that embeds itself in various domains. Not just Aerospace. The name comes from the justification used - "High technology, you see. Very expensive. Can't reduce costs. Just have to live with it"
Eventually the cycle breaks when the comedy gets too much. In space technology, i the US, the Future Imagery Architecture project collapsed under a weight of impossible specifications and lack of contractor skill - it was an attempt to build spy sats with increased capability but reduced size. Reduced size, because the existing large (for then) rockets were escaping in cost and the FIA project was targeting the smaller Delta II rocket.
A disaster at the time, it led to a whole raft of assumptions about how space (and space launch) development should be done to be swept away.
We have a similar issue with infrastructure in this country. We have got to the stage where major rail project are next to impossible - due to cost and time. We have reached something similar in house building - see the recent collapse in new starts in some areas.
Her only one, mind.
Still, looking good for my negative growth in the pb.com prediction competition.
WTI is currently at $95 with Brent around $100 per barrel. These are the kind of numbers which, if sustained, will push us (and a lot of other countries) into recession. Even strong performing economies will feel this kind of oil price "shock" if it continues for any length of time.
There still seems plenty of confusion over Hormuz and oil production in the Gulf States and a degree of clarity would be welcome. The Iranians, if the morning coverage is to be believed, are still capable of strikes but on a limited scale.
Last night's local council by-elections were again poor for both Labour and the Conservatives with both losing share - to be fair, the seven votes won by Labour in the Cotswolds were fractionally worse than the eight won by the Conservatives in Liverpool but both parties took a pounding in all the seats.
Something for Reform, Greens and the LDs in last night's results and you could predict where the changes would be based on areas of known strength and weakness.
I'm beginning to wonder how well the Greens will do in parts of Inner London in May - it will be fascinating to see the numbers of candidates they can put up in places like Lewisham. Last time, Labour won 55% and all 54 seats, the Greens got 20% and stood 44 candidates. I suspect a full slate of Green candidates this time and if they can get the big swings some of the local by-elections are suggesting, it could be a real shock for Labour.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ygj315dx7o
They were fired for not reporting what the Dear Leader wanted to hear .
Also Politico reported Tuesday.
According to them, the staff of the Pentagon department responsible for developing, analyzing, and implementing methods for protecting civilians in military operations, which previously had about 200 employees, has been reduced by 90 percent. And only one out of ten employees remains in a similar department of the US Central Command (CENTCOM).
These units were supposed to investigate the circumstances of the recent attack on a girls' school in Iran.
According to Politico, the aforesaid staff cuts made to these units have significantly reduced the US ability to protect civilians during the largest airstrike in decades.
No ifs no buts
His sole aim is to kill anyone who he deems a threat, even if 99.8% are not threats.
Until he is removed there will be no peace in the ME
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Scottish_Parliament_election
Welcome to the Dark Blue Side.
The mission won't be semi-accomplished until ground troops take the uranium, at the very least.
The mission won't be fully accomplished until there is regime change, which will also probably need ground troops.
That's not a reason to end the conflict, it is a reason to go much harder and do it properly. Which they're too frit to do. Incompetents.
But no Trump? Bliss.
There are aspects of what Cameron called "liberal conservatism" I was happy to support and Conservatives can be quite sound on environmental matters (or they were because the climate change deniers and the anti-Net Zero types took over).
I was also happy with a lot of what Nick Hurd was proposing in terms of decentralisation but again that's all gone and we're back to the old "Westminster and Whitehall know best" top down centralisation beloved of the Thatcher/Major years.
Ukraine was never a threat to Russia, so there was absolutely no justification whatsoever for Russia to invade. Hamas and Hezbollah are threats to Israel as even you have to admit.
There will be peace when there are no more threats.
Regime change in Iran would go a long way to accomplishing that.
Rural areas get this effortlessly. In our patch any committee faced with any proposal, however trivial, wants to know who proposes it well before it considers any actual merits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hCKv3HbTjA