It really is deeply dispiriting the see the level of utter burning contempt in which Nicola Sturgeon holds the independence movement, if this is the sort of ludicrously insulting garbage she thinks it’ll swallow.
The BBC’s coverage of the Scottish election campaign and what has been described as its “virtual blackout” of ALBA will be the subject of special Ofcom election Committee hearing on Friday 23rd April.
We imagine people may wish to read the Alba Party manifesto.
It can be downloaded by clicking the link above. Had we formed our own party it’s pretty much the manifesto we’d have written, and we especially endorse the gorgeous pooch on the front.
The First Minister released a short film this week.
While it has the character of a hostage video, with terrorists just off-camera pointing a gun at the unfortunate victim and forcing them to read out a pre-prepared text, sadly we doubt that was the case. We think this is really what she believes and intends.
We’ve been racking our brains for a few hours now, but we still haven’t been able to think of a single UK citizen of the last 100 years – indeed, probably the last 300 – who has terrified the British establishment more than Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond.
By any conceivable measure Salmond is the most successful Scottish politician of all time. He’s the only one to date to have won a (supposedly impossible) majority in the Scottish Parliament, the only one to have secured an independence referendum, and the man who took Scotland to the brink of regaining its democracy, where – despite the best efforts of his successor – it still just about remains.
He survived a uniformly hostile media for 20 years as SNP leader, then also survived a corrupt and criminal conspiracy within his own former party to have him imprisoned, walking out of court a free and innocent man despite a two-year smear campaign in the press and a police and government operation of unprecedented scale trying to convict him.
(A point that hasn’t been made enough in coverage of the entire fiasco is the amount of police resources which were devoted to the case. Ask the average woman who’s alleged a sexual assault below the level of rape – or indeed an actual rape – if SHE got a team of two dozen dedicated police officers interviewing over 400 people at a cost of millions of pounds to try to firm up HER claim.)
So you’d think that when he formed a brand-new political party, which got numerous elected representatives from the SNP to defect to it, and contested a notionally-crucial Scottish general election, it would sound like a work of absurdist dystopian fiction if one were to suggest the media would exclude it from even participating in televised election debates in a manner more befitting North Korea than a Western democracy.
So-called “puberty blockers” – the class of drugs that were used to “chemically castrate” computing pioneer Alan Turing for being homosexual (a crime in the UK in the 1950s), which is believed to have led to his suicide by cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 are extremely dangerous.
Scotland’s only gender clinic, the Sandyford, had to apologise just a few months ago for having concealed the very serious hazards posed by the drugs. But it has no plans to stop prescribing them to under-16s.
And the Scottish Government refuses to intervene in the matter.
Yesterday we mentioned an SNP election leaflet that someone had posted on social media. It turns out that either deliberately or accidentally (probably the latter, while taking out the bit with their name and address on it) they’d cropped off part of it containing a logo that does passingly refer to independence. You can see it down at the bottom-right corner.
So we should note that by way of clarification. But what’s more interesting about the rest of the leaflet is that if you took the logos off it, it could be from literally ANY of the parties contesting the election. It contains no policies whatsoever, just some general feelgood sloganeering. Which parties, do you suppose, are campaigning AGAINST “equipping children to succeed” or “supporting businesses” or “creating jobs”?
The deeper truth is that the leaflet demonstrates how completely pointless this election actually is, because nothing you do with your vote next month is going to affect anything that happens in the subsequent five years. Only one party is going to win, and once they do it won’t matter what’s in the 76-page “manifesto” they released today. The manifesto is a fake – in reality it amounts to a single line: “keep us in power so we can fill our pockets and do whatever we like for another half a decade, suckers”.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “THE CRISIS IN HUMANIST POLITICAL THEORY by Herman Dooyeweerd (1931, republished 2010) Currently (re-)reading above book. Just reached the following…” Jul 26, 19:30
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “It goes further than that, Mark. Once you are a woman they send in the crone with the rusty razor…” Jul 26, 19:27
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “During the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ the streets had no names. In today’s Middle east ‘Troubles’ the names have no streets.” Jul 26, 19:14
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “I think we can all agree there’s a need to dampen things down. Send for Rayner.” Jul 26, 19:11
Bilbo on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Labour is ideologically tied to immigration whether they like it or not. We are in a time where the UK…” Jul 26, 18:42
Southernbystander on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “I would have said yes to this genius spot, but no, unless the Cairngorms are full of ham.” Jul 26, 18:12
Southernbystander on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “I was on the border not very long ago and I can assure you there was a broken old fence…” Jul 26, 18:01
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Being a Trans in a Muslim country is a waste of time and money. Once you are a woman they…” Jul 26, 17:13
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “I’ve came to the conclusion that if you are a gay Scot then voting for the Green party is Turkeys…” Jul 26, 17:04
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “They are going to blame Elon Musk. They won’t admit that progressive leftist ideology has failed.” Jul 26, 16:29
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “I used to have a T-shirt that said in German ” I’m a jelly doughnut”.” Jul 26, 16:06
Young Lochinvar on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Two of JFKs most memorable speech quotes; “Ask not what your country can do for you..” And “Ich bin ein…” Jul 26, 15:49
Mark Beggan on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “So that’s were the saying ‘cut your cloth according to your pocket comes from. The Jocks had big deep pockets…” Jul 26, 15:49
Northcode on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “The length of time a constitutional arrangement has existed doesn’t determine whether it operates on long-term or short-term incentives. A…” Jul 26, 14:37
Northcode on Ain’t it funny how things change?: ““…even though we now live in a revised world.” Your comment seems to rest on the assumption that constitutional questions…” Jul 26, 14:29
John Cleary on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Hello Stu, Want to know what happened to John Smith? Have a look here https://drive.proton.me/urls/0J0FYKBG24#F9ZfxS0qYcr6” Jul 26, 14:07
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Burnham setting the heather alight? His very name suggests guilt.” Jul 26, 13:53
James Che on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Meantime, back to the news that Stu posted, Anas Sarwar, Ruthie, the SNP, and Labour switch believes and shared branch…” Jul 26, 13:39
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “The King of the North in the South is going to sort it. The Ginger Growler has returned from exile…” Jul 26, 13:26
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: ““colonial systems are built for the short term” You forget we’re not all thousand year old, space traveling Picts, Northy.…” Jul 26, 13:21
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: ““they don’t dissolve the underlying constitutional questions” They do have an affect on democratic voter’s decisions. “they hinge on internal…” Jul 26, 13:16
Hatey McHateface on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “A bit OTT, Confused, but there’s some diamonds there amidst the dross. One of the things you haven’t thought through.…” Jul 26, 12:39
Bilbo on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Glasgow City Council has been accepting asylum applicants from the UK Home Office since 1999, well before the SNP took…” Jul 26, 12:31
Northcode on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “The mood came upon me to write a speech. A speech that might help folk understand Scotland’s predicament. A speech…” Jul 26, 12:29
Minceheid on Ain’t it funny how things change?: “Hatey McHateface says: 26 July, 2026 at 9:37 am Meantime, in other news, swathes of Europe and even some bits…” Jul 26, 11:53