It seems that it’s fine to farm important judgments out to mysterious shadowy figures who just make important chunks of them up out of thin air, and then issue them in your own name. Back in your boxes, plebs.
This clip was broadcast on ITV News Wales this week.
It’s a staggeringly obvious mess for a whole raft of reasons – a number of completely spurious, illogical and unsupported claims are accepted as facts without any sort of challenge or balancing voice (which has been standard practice on ITV News for a while now across almost any contentious political topic) – but it led us to somewhere magnitudes of crazier still.
My first ever real experience of politics was playing Dictator.
Originally written by Don Priestley for the Sinclair ZX81 in 1982, it was a simple text-based game which subsequently came to other formats including the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Elan Enterprise and the ZX Spectrum, which is where I encountered it.
It’s almost – almost – worth voting SNP in May because of this:
Because it would be at least momentarily absolutely hilarious watching Swinney try to explain why his “100% guaranteed” second indyref didn’t happen if the SNP actually did get a majority on 30% of the vote (which is narrowly feasible on current polling).
This week The National published a poll it commissioned from Find Out Now for this May’s Scottish Parliament election, alongside a seat projection from Sir John Curtice. Here are the list-vote figures from the poll.
The seat projection calculated that the election would result in 59 SNP MSPs (six short of the number John Swinney says is the minimum needed to force a second indyref), 25 for Reform, 13 for the Greens, 12 each for Labour and the Tories and eight for the Lib Dems.
It didn’t specify how many of the seats were constituency ones and how many were list ones, so we dropped Sir John a line and asked him.
Yesterday we noted in passing that independence support now outstrips that of the SNP by more than 20 points, making the party into a gigantic liability as the vehicle for enabling Scots to leave the UK. Put simply, even when voters want independence (as most now do), they’re not willing to vote SNP to get it.
(Not, of course, that they WOULD get it if they voted SNP – the party still having no coherent or credible strategy to achieve it – but more than 40% of would-be Yes voters are no longer prepared to even try giving them the benefit of yet another mandate.)
And since what everyone loves most of all on New Year’s Day is a good old wade in some political stats, we thought we’d take a little more detail on that.
With Reform now pretty consistently miles in front in polling for the next UK election, logically this is brilliant news for the Scottish independence movement, isn’t it?
So can anyone explain why the SNP is so desperate to stop them?
diabloandco on The Marshalling Plan: “The MSM doesn’t do anything worthwhile or honest .” Feb 3, 21:38
Del G on The Marshalling Plan: “So you explain how voters can play the system, and how unionist voters can combine to poke a stick in…” Feb 3, 21:31
Southernbystander on Shield Of The Phantom: “I would recommend the first two essays actually – the one by McGinn is as you would expect a bit…” Feb 3, 20:53
Confused on The Marshalling Plan: “one way Farage could boost support for reform would be to toughen up the stance on immigration; the voters would…” Feb 3, 20:48
Confused on The Marshalling Plan: “all these little flamboyant screeds I have put together about farage – its not me “making shit up” with a…” Feb 3, 20:45
Confused on The Marshalling Plan: “oil and gas was a disaster for Scotland as it allowed the thatcherite neoliberal wrecking ball to be applied EVERYONE…” Feb 3, 20:44
Willie on The Marshalling Plan: “Just been reading details of the emails between? Mandelson and Epstein during the Gordon Brown years. Mandelson’s interactions were not…” Feb 3, 20:40
Alf Baird on The Marshalling Plan: “The LS mandate offered is pretty clear and unambiguous, and fundamentally different to the SNP’s continued neutrality on independence. Voting…” Feb 3, 20:11
Skip_NC on The Marshalling Plan: “Hatey, next time you open your mouth, put some food in it. It’s better than letting your belly rumble.” Feb 3, 19:41
Skip_NC on The Marshalling Plan: “I agree that ISP is pro-independence but why on earth do you think Alba is not?” Feb 3, 19:39
Colin Alexander on The Marshalling Plan: “Alf Baird So, it’s a plebiscite: Aye or no to independence? So, they aren’t seeking election to the gravy train…” Feb 3, 19:38
Duncan Strachan on The Marshalling Plan: “Wally anither exactly. Destroy the ballot. Make sure we do.” Feb 3, 19:33
Duncan Strachan on The Marshalling Plan: “Effijy Exactly. vote reform? F off, vote Unionist nup. Vote that dog swiny, forget it. Go and destroy the constituency…” Feb 3, 19:25
Duncan Strachan on The Marshalling Plan: “Aye.I refuse to vote for that swiny. He is the worst thing to happen to Scotland. I will be destroying…” Feb 3, 19:14
Alf Baird on The Marshalling Plan: “Polls are intentionally excluding the Liberate Scotland alliance parties in their offer of options to surveyed voters. If independence voters…” Feb 3, 17:52
PC Foster on The Marshalling Plan: “sam says: In moving towards Scottish independence is it better to have a Reform government in UK/England and weak/no Reform…” Feb 3, 17:27
Hatey McHateface on The Marshalling Plan: “@Skip_NC The way I see it, the establishment of the wee pretendy parliament as a device to sink Indy was…” Feb 3, 14:08
Hatey McHateface on The Marshalling Plan: ““is it better to have a Reform government in UK/England and weak/no Reform in Scotland?” Before we can answer that…” Feb 3, 13:49
Hatey McHateface on The Marshalling Plan: ““There isn’t one ordinary Scot who benefited from oil in Scotland” Grade 1, 100% pure, gold-plated, shite. I personally know…” Feb 3, 13:40
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “The only way to save Scotland, its resources , mineral wealth and assets is for Scotland to recognise that it…” Feb 3, 13:26
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “The only way to save Scotland, its resources , mineral wealth and assets is for Scotland to recognise that it…” Feb 3, 13:19
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “I am not daft enough to blame Alex Salmond for all the woes of Scotland, he did some good things…” Feb 3, 12:52
100%Yes on The Marshalling Plan: “There isn’t one ordinary Scot who benefited from oil in Scotland the only people to have benefited was London and…” Feb 3, 12:45
sam on The Marshalling Plan: “In moving towards Scottish independence is it better to have a Reform government in UK/England and weak/no Reform in Scotland?” Feb 3, 12:18
Colin Alexander on The Marshalling Plan: ““Let’s just remind ourselves of something Alex Salmond did, he made the Scottish parliament a parliament”. Really? How? With Trumpian…” Feb 3, 12:16
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Alex Salmond did not make the devolved parliament in Scotland a Scottish parliament, just for clarity, It remained under the…” Feb 3, 11:15
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Westminster own the devolved government sent to Scotland, its under their caveats and reservations in the Scotland act, The DHondt…” Feb 3, 11:02
sam on The Marshalling Plan: “https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/steve-bannon-boasted-about-farage-ties-exchange-epstein “Newly released files show Epstein and Bannon messaging each other on 10 March 2018, arranging to meet in Paris.…” Feb 3, 10:38
Skip_NC on The Marshalling Plan: “Hatey, well yes, Reform will change things in that they will happily abolish parliament. As I have been focusing on…” Feb 3, 10:22
