The Portillo Moments 177
Posted on
December 01, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Archive for the ‘analysis’
The Snake In The Long Grass 154
Posted on
November 30, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We had, we think it’s only fair to say, extremely low expectations of Nicola Sturgeon’s keynote speech this afternoon to the SNP’s soporific, strangled 2020 non-conference. It seems that members felt the same, because 15 seconds before the speech began only 1,166 of them were logged in to watch it.
The speech she just delivered, though, limboed under those expectations in platform shoes and a stovepipe hat without even grazing the underside of the bar.
Titanic Blinky 203
Posted on
November 29, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In a post last month we referenced a ZX Spectrum computer game from 1984 called “Worse Things Happen At Sea”. Today as we watched the First Minister on the Andrew Marr Show, we were put in mind of another nautical-disaster-themed one from a great deal nearer to the end of the Speccy’s life.
It was grim viewing in every sense.
Pete’s Perfect Plan 241
Posted on
November 24, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Faction Factory 246
Posted on
November 23, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Sometimes, despite everything, you just have to laugh.
No matter how black and rueful a laugh it might be.
Hate in numbers 190
Posted on
November 20, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Scottish Parliament will today almost certainly pass a dangerously misleading and inaccurate motion to mark “Transgender Day Of Remembrance”, and in doing so will join countless other institutions across the UK captured by trans ideology to the great detriment of women’s rights, freedom of speech and general sanity.
So we thought we’d mark it with a very short fact check.
The state is not her 224
Posted on
November 19, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
One of the dumber things we see regularly posted on social media is that Yes voices should stop criticising the First Minister because her leadership is the only reason Yes is now consistently ahead in the polls and we would have no chance of winning a new referendum with someone else in charge.
This is obviously nonsense, because Nicola Sturgeon was SNP leader and FM for five years in which support moved barely a single millimetre, until COVID-19 came along. Our current lead is due entirely to a tiny invisible virus and a giant Etonian buffoon.
But you know us, readers – we like to check.
Agents of fear 288
Posted on
November 08, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
No explanation is given for why “writer at large” Neil Mackay has suddenly conducted a “wide-ranging, exclusive interview” with “one of Britain’s most senior spy chiefs” for today’s Herald On Sunday.
As far as we’re aware absolutely nothing has happened in respect of the UK’s nuclear “deterrent” to make the subject topical. Maybe Mackay just coincidentally bumped into Sir David Omand down the pub or something.
The Sitter 212
Posted on
October 30, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s important not to understate the magnitude of the chance we’re missing.
The whole rotten structure 198
Posted on
October 28, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It was my birthday yesterday, readers. (Late presents still accepted. The cheapest one is fine.) I got taken out to lunch and there was someone’s new kitten to play with, but mostly what flooded in wasn’t birthday cards but new scandal about the SNP.
It’s hard to know where to even start tackling the avalanche of new information. There were extraordinary revelations from the Salmond inquiry. There were other shocking revelations about the investigation. There was Alex Salmond’s request for the separate independent inquiry into Nicola Sturgeon to determine whether she lied to Parliament (which it should have been doing in the first place).
We’ll get to all that stuff in due course. But because there’s nothing like a good delve through some data, we’ll kick off with the SNP accounts.
To the faraway towns 245
Posted on
October 24, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Voting is now open in the selection contests to determine who the SNP’s candidates at next year’s election will be. Given the extremely dodgy secret-Survey-Monkey-ballot shenanigans recently adopted by the party NEC, we’re uncomfortably reminded of a famous quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: “it’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes”.
An excellent blog by the former SNP Trade & Industry spokesman Iain Lawson today highlights the near-impossibility of effecting change from within the SNP now, due to changes made by the leadership to eliminate the influence of ordinary members.
Indeed, so secure do the party’s controlling faction consider themselves that they now feel able to openly call their own supporters “bitches”.
But not quite SO secure that they still don’t want to cheat.
Waiting For The Men 312
Posted on
October 18, 2020 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The battle to save the soul of the SNP – formerly a party of Scottish independence but now a career vehicle for intolerant science-denying cultists solely interested in social engineering – is already almost lost.
By delaying its online pretend “conference” until the end of November, the party has ensured that the chronically dysfunctional current National Executive Committee (NEC) controls the selection of candidates for next year’s election, and it’s using that power every bit as crookedly as anyone who’s been paying attention recently might fear.
Following the stitch-up of Joanna Cherry, the latest victim of the SNP’s woke cabal is Caroline McAllister, a woman who the party considers quite fit to be a councillor – and indeed the Deputy Leader of its group on West Dunbartonshire council – but who has suddenly somehow become unacceptable when she tried to seek nomination for the MSP seat currently held by Jackie Baillie of Scottish Labour.
She is, of course, far from alone.
