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The Innocent 78

Posted on May 18, 2024 by

Missing Memory Man 56

Posted on May 17, 2024 by

We watched Question Time last night for the first time in about nine years, and this comment from SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn raised an eyebrow.

Because we couldn’t remember ANY times that Flynn had publicly expressed any problems with the Scottish Greens during their governing alliance.

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A Better Togetherness 359

Posted on May 15, 2024 by

The National have buried this pretty quickly in understandable embarrassment:

Because some things are just a little TOO on-the-nose for comfort.

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Hate Has No Genitalia 51

Posted on May 14, 2024 by

We’ve just rather belatedly (the request was sent on 14 March and should have been responded to a month ago) received this:

It’s official: the Hate Monster is non-binary.

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You’ve Been Had 266

Posted on May 13, 2024 by

The picture editor of The Times must have been delighted with this gift.

But it’s a very accurate picture, and fairly used.

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Window Dressing 108

Posted on May 11, 2024 by

The Circus Of Hate 286

Posted on May 09, 2024 by

Well, what a nice statement of unity and tolerance this is:

And only slightly undermined by coming from THIS guy:

But Smith’s new message of tolerance hasn’t fully penetrated the party ranks.

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The Symbolist 70

Posted on May 09, 2024 by

Comment seems superfluous, really.

So we’ll just make a couple of the obvious points for the sake of it and then we’re off to the park.

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Continuity continued 87

Posted on May 08, 2024 by

So that was a big waste of everyone’s time.

We’re not sure why John Swinney made a big show of dragging all his ministers away from their desks to Bute House today in order to tell them nothing had changed. All he’s done is give Kate Forbes the smallest possible sliver of Shona Robison’s job and everything else has stayed the same.

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A watery grave 139

Posted on May 07, 2024 by

We watched a TV documentary about the sinking of the Bismarck last week.

The most striking aspect of it was the visible and audible distress on the faces and in the voices of some of the Royal Navy sailors who’d been on the ships which sent the German battleship to the Atlantic seabed as they told the story of the final battle.

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The Groomers’ Union 117

Posted on May 06, 2024 by

We were going to write a follow-up piece to this last week, until the SNP detonated a hand-grenade in its own trouser pocket. But with the coronation of John Swinney this afternoon after the only challenger sold out for some shiny beads and trinkets, we can get back to some serious news.

The controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which has been involved in a number of serious child sexual abuse scandals, continues to exert considerable influence on Scotland’s education system, thanks to extremely lavish funding from taxpayers – well over a million pounds from hard-pressed councils in the last year alone to address unspecified issues whose urgency is difficult to identify.

After our last piece we sent LGBTYS a letter raising our concerns about their improper interference with primary schools, something we were obliged to do before we could file a formal complaint with Scotland’s charity regulator, the OSCR.

We received an automated reply on 24 April saying “We are currently experiencing staff shortages and it may take up to a week to respond to your email.”

That deadline expired five days ago, and we will now be writing to the OSCR. But in the meantime LGBTYS persists in exceeding its remit, with deeply alarming results.

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The Unforgiven 163

Posted on May 05, 2024 by

We’ve already posted a shorter and snappier soundbite from this video on our Twitter, but it’s really worth watching the full version here:

Because the body language is remarkable. For three and a half minutes, Neil Gray is completely unable to look his former colleague – an SNP MSP until a few months ago, a fellow government minister until 2022 –  in the eye.

He sits stiff as a board, his teeth gritted, his face like thunder, staring directly ahead at the back wall of the studio as Ash Regan patiently and calmly outlines the extremely modest requirements Alba had set out in return for supporting Humza Yousaf and the SNP government in Parliamentary votes of confidence.

And when host Stephen Jardine asks him what exactly was so unreasonable about them, he can’t help himself, and blurts out that it was really all about preventing Alex Salmond from regaining any sort of influence on Scottish politics and insisting that his “rehabilitation” could not be permitted, even if the result of blocking it was the loss of an SNP First Minister and the potential bringing down of an SNP government.

And at this point a fair-minded person might ask: rehabilitation from what, precisely?

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