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The Broken Rainbow 5

Posted on May 13, 2026 by

The image below is a graph illustrating how many seats each party won in last week’s supposedly “proportional” Scottish Parliament election, compared to how many they would have won if the electoral system had been actually proportional.

The SNP and Greens are now over-represented by 37% and 50% respectively, while the Unionist parties are all under-represented compared to their vote share by (left to right) 26%, 19%, 20% and 23%.

The Additional Member System has failed very badly at its job, from either perspective. “Pro-indy” parties have 73 seats (57%) rather than the 52 seats that their 40.8% vote share should have earned, while Unionist parties have 56 seats (or 43%) when they should have 69 for their 56% of the vote.

(The other 4% of the vote was scattered among 24 other parties or independents, with 1.8% going to identifiably pro-independence candidates, increasing the total “pro-indy” vote to 42.6%, fully 10 points short of current polling for independence itself.)

It is, therefore, a little bit of a stretch – to put it mildly – to present the refusal of the UK government to grant a second independence referendum on the basis of the results as an outrage against “democracy”. Indeed, if any outrage against democracy has taken place, it happened last Thursday.

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The Hills Of Far Away 115

Posted on May 12, 2026 by

Anyone seeking to make a compelling argument for the proposition that Scotland’s politicians and lawmakers are simply too farcically incompetent to ever be trusted with running an independent country had a gift-wrapped Godsend delivered to them last week by the idiot student children of Edinburgh.

But we can’t really put the blame on the colourfully-haired, keffiyeh-clad cretin kiddies of the capital for that, because it’s their elders and betters who opened the door.

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And Nothing Happened Forever 353

Posted on May 09, 2026 by

Well, we told you so. We told you in March (and indeed long before then) that the 2026 Holyrood election was a giant waste of time and money that would deliver exactly the same useless Parliament we already had, and so it proved.

The SNP ended up giving half-a-dozen seats to the Greens, Labour donated a handful to the Lib Dems, the Tories split into two parties with 29 seats instead of a single party with 31 and that’s about it. The SNP, Greens and Lib Dems stayed first, fourth and last, while the right-wing split let Labour creep from 3rd to joint 2nd despite losing seats.

A pro-indy tally of 72 became a pro-indy tally of 73, big whoop, and almost every SNP list vote elected Unionists instead, just as we told you for almost a year it would do.

We also told you that the only place there was even a chance of an SNP list seat was in the Highland region, where they did indeed sneak one at the very death of play, only because they’d somehow pulled off the incredible feat of losing Kate Forbes’ old seat of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch on a huge 21% swing, despite having started with a 15,000 majority in a seat where only 39,000 people voted.

So there we are.

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Pick Your Poison 208

Posted on May 07, 2026 by

At the end of last year we noted the unusual and persistent levels of divergence in Scottish political polling. As polls have become much more frequent during the election campaign, nothing about that has changed. The final polls, published yesterday, are so far apart from each other that they tell us basically zip.

Analysing this mess is meaningless, so we’ll just give you some highlights.

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The value bet 68

Posted on May 06, 2026 by

To pass the time on (praise be to Baby Jeebus) the last day of the Holyrood election campaign, we thought we’d do a catch-up summary of all the seat projections we could find from last month and this month. Here it is.

Now, as it happens we think the potential seat ranges are significantly wider. There are so many factors of uncertainty that while there’s no credible doubt who’s going to be the biggest party, we reckon SNP seats could potentially be anywhere from about 47 to 68 (most likely the upper part of that range), with corresponding ramifications below.

But there’s one potentially interesting thing in that bottom half.

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Anas Sarwar is a winner 32

Posted on May 06, 2026 by

Specifically, of the Single Most Toe-Curlingly, Face-Palmingly Cretinous Thing Said In The 2026 Holyrood Election Campaign, And Possibly Any Election Ever, Prize.

We mean, wow. We could easily write a 1000-word article purely on the top 10 things that are fatuously, obviously idiotic about those three short sentences, and so could you. So imagine how embarrassed the poor Daily Record must be today.

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Binfire Of The Vanities 181

Posted on May 04, 2026 by

For a nation that prides itself on hating the Tories, this is very odd.

And if you don’t see how, let us illustrate.

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Seven Days Too Long 315

Posted on April 30, 2026 by

It’s nearly over, readers. Just one more week of this to endure.

The most miserable Holyrood election campaign of all time will end next Thursday with an election which will deliver Scotland’s most miserable devolved government of all time. Only the exact form, colour and shape of the misery remains to be determined.

So as the SNP promise through forked tongues to cut the cost of living with a pledge they know full well they have no chance of being able to actually implement, while using the powers they DO have to INCREASE the cost of everything that makes life WORTH living, let’s look at exactly what flavour of dog vomit we can expect to be choking down along with our state-approved organic broccoli and fat-free gruel for the next half-decade.

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Push The Button 196

Posted on April 25, 2026 by

We’ve been thinking about this all morning, readers.

To the point where we’d vote for any party pledging to implement it at once.

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How To Get Away With Crimes 62

Posted on April 22, 2026 by

After many years of vindictively, vexatiously and maliciously plaguing innocent people, it seemed in February this year that disgraced and deranged former policeman Lynsay Watson‘s campaign of terror might be finally beginning to draw to a close.

Attending the Civic Justice Centre in Manchester as part of an ongoing attempt to persecute the feminist journalist and author Helen Joyce, Watson was intercepted by Greater Manchester Police and arrested in connection with allegations of harassment of several people, one of whom was myself.

Watson had been evading justice for a long time. He provides false addresses to the police and courts (which is a crime in itself), and despite numerous criminal complaints against him he manages to dodge arrest because police forces endlessly ping-pong the complaints between each other (“He lives in YOUR area!” “No, yours!”) and allow him to repeatedly arrange voluntary interviews which he never turns up to, stalling and hiding until the six-month limit on harassment cases times out.

And guess what, readers?

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The Pit Of Vipers 248

Posted on April 19, 2026 by

It’s hard to know where to start with the Sunday Mail’s lead story today.

Especially if one doesn’t want sent to prison.

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The Narcissism Of No Differences 96

Posted on April 17, 2026 by

So that’s the full set of manifestos in.

You can download them all here in a oner, if you’re REALLY bored. But we don’t advise it, because we can just tell you what they say in a couple of minutes.

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    • Aidan on The Hills Of Far Away: “Of course people living in a rich and prosperous country cosplaying as victims is one thing you missed from your…May 13, 17:29
    • Aidan on The Hills Of Far Away: “Had Blair been tried and found guilty of being a war criminal, or even indicted?May 13, 17:14
    • Captain Caveman on The Hills Of Far Away: “Regardless of the whys and wherefores, Jay, one thing is certain: you’re a pretentious, obnoxious, insufferable wanker. 🙂 Yup. Deffo…May 13, 17:10
    • Aidan on The Broken Rainbow: “Then when the planned showdown in the 2029 General Election goes nowhere, there will always be the 2031 Holyrood election…May 13, 17:03
    • Jay on The Hills Of Far Away: “To S. MacKay: firstly you need to learn how to express yourself, even at the level of punctuation. Secondly, constructing…May 13, 16:49
    • Northcode on The Hills Of Far Away: “Calling something “horseshit” isn’t an argument. It’s a way of avoiding one. Exposing the mechanics of abusive power is not…May 13, 16:13
    • 100%Yes on The Broken Rainbow: “Watch yourself Kelly’s Eye will be crowing from the rooftops about the mistake, but he won’t admit he conned everyone…May 13, 16:03
    • Lorncal on The Hills Of Far Away: “That should read: now concentrate…May 13, 15:51
    • Lorncal on The Broken Rainbow: “O what a tangled web we weave…May 13, 15:48
    • duncanio on The Broken Rainbow: “The AMS makes the overall result less disproportional rather than more proportional. It mitigates the winner tale all FPTP element…May 13, 15:16
    • Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Broken Rainbow: “EMBARRASSING ARITHMETICAL ERROR CORRECTED.May 13, 15:07
    • Geri on The Hills Of Far Away: “Blair & all his demonic spawn should be removed from every government office. He’s a war crim, not once, not…May 13, 14:33
    • Geri on The Hills Of Far Away: “So if I just stand on my own two feet for independence our colonial overlords will give us *permission*? I…May 13, 14:22
    • Alf Baird on The Hills Of Far Away: “” cultural self-belief and constitutional reality lie so far apart” Indeed so, Northcode. Scots think o oorsels as a nation…May 13, 14:06
    • Anthem on The Hills Of Far Away: “So environmental protections and climate rules only apply to Scottish oil & Gas within UK territories. I’ll just leave this…May 13, 13:58
    • Lorncal on The Hills Of Far Away: “It has been on Australian TV, agentx. They were laughing their wee heids aff at the stupidity of the Scots!May 13, 13:55
    • Alf Baird on The Hills Of Far Away: “Colonialism is not really that difficult to understand: https://salvo.scot/scotlands-colonial-status/May 13, 13:54
    • Lorncal on The Hills Of Far Away: “Because everything ‘trans’ is about them. Everything anything is about them. They are the most victimised group ever in the…May 13, 13:51
    • Iain More on The Hills Of Far Away: “Meanwhile back in Sleazy Corrupt Westmidden Tory Blair’s Daughter in Law gets a Govt AI Contract for £500 million.May 13, 13:47
    • Lorncal on The Hills Of Far Away: “Not many, I should think. This was a Green party scam from beginning to end that the Scottish Electoral Commission…May 13, 13:40
    • Stuart MacKay on The Hills Of Far Away: “Jesus H. Christ. Enough with this post-colonial horseshit. I you see yourself as a victim, and behave like your a…May 13, 13:32
    • Chris on The Hills Of Far Away: “MAGA Americans are having a laugh at this: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/meanwhile-scotland?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8034May 13, 13:28
    • Dunx on The Hills Of Far Away: “I think most green voters can get to 12 using their fingers alone.May 13, 13:21
    • Northcode on The Hills Of Far Away: “Ma fowk, the Picts, thank ye , Sam, fir yon link whit ye hiv brung tae us in this place.…May 13, 12:47
    • Sven on The Hills Of Far Away: “Jings, and here was me sitting back with a strongly brewed ‘wet’ thoroughly enjoying watching the Household Brigade doing what…May 13, 12:24
    • sam on The Hills Of Far Away: “Wes Streeting leaving his post won’t be an “unreported removal” though he knows all about unreported removals. “Thank you for…May 13, 12:23
    • Northcode on The Hills Of Far Away: “Since being introduced to postcolonial theory by Alf Baird in this place a couple or so years ago I have…May 13, 12:14
    • Cynicus on The Hills Of Far Away: ““ What century is this?” ======= Maybe you should email that question to Peter Mandelson protégé, Wes Streeting. Beth Rigby…May 13, 11:54
    • TURABDIN on The Hills Of Far Away: “STATE OPENING OF «PARLIAMENT»…..boom, boom, boom…. ruritanian & mega super hyper creepy….mothballs too. What century is this?May 13, 11:33
    • agentx on The Hills Of Far Away: “Operation Branchform has been so weird I am not going to try to guess what will happen at Court.May 13, 11:31
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