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?
Alf Baird on The Promise: ““the UK will eventually break up. But when it does, Scotland will too. Probably into four smaller states.” Jings, Hatey,…” Jun 27, 12:26
Alf Baird on The Promise: ““the Civil Service isn’t politically impartial” Of course its not; the main political and ideological purpose of all (UK) civil…” Jun 27, 12:11
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Promise: “Worth noting here that a “state of exception” regarding impartiality was in play during the 2014 referendum campaign. When the…” Jun 27, 12:09
Captain Caveman on The Promise: “Oh, probably add “too indoctrinated”, “incapable of critical thought” and “too left wing” to the mix as well.” Jun 27, 12:02
Lorncal on The Promise: “They might charge a couple of ‘sacrificial lambs’, who would probably go on to be cleared anyway, but they will…” Jun 27, 11:59
Captain Caveman on The Promise: ““The wrong people got their hands on the power because the right people were too nice, too innocent, too tolerant…” Jun 27, 11:49
Lorncal on The Promise: “It would set a legal precedent, I think, Robert, for governments to be forced to use promised ‘ring-fenced’ funds only…” Jun 27, 11:48
Desimond on The Promise: “Subtle difference in first sentence of each email. I wonder if this was a prompt or just one of those…” Jun 27, 11:45
Spartan 117 on The Promise: “A large part of current issues are the fact that the Civil Service isn’t politically impartial. A sensible ruling that…” Jun 27, 11:13
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Promise: “NI CIVIL SERVICE IMPOSES STAFF ‘PRIDE’ PARADE BAN The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) has halted its participation in LGBT…” Jun 27, 10:08
Hatey McHateface on The Promise: “The wrong people got their hands on the power because the right people were too nice, too innocent, too tolerant…” Jun 27, 09:57
Hatey McHateface on The Promise: “Logic, Confounder? No way. When you start with a conclusion and then interpret everything that happens as proof of your…” Jun 27, 09:39
Hatey McHateface on The Promise: “That’s right Bob, amaze and inspire Scotland and the rest of the world with your profundity, erudition and scintillating wit.…” Jun 27, 09:15
Eric on The Promise: “Hats off to WoS and your summary also excellent. The SNP need this to go away or they will be…” Jun 27, 09:01
Captain Caveman on The Guilty Party: “Heh. Well, there is no “work” to blow out of the water, YL – unless you count 30 seconds’ worth…” Jun 27, 08:59
willie on The Promise: “Just to say another excellent article exposing the absolute scandal at the heart of the SNP and the supposedly hypothecated…” Jun 27, 08:29
David Blake on The Promise: “I think you are doing a great job exposing a huge scandal o am therefore reluctant to pick fault. But…” Jun 27, 06:54
Aidan on The Guilty Party: “Whilst that’s true Alf you aren’t entirely comparing like with like. The MV Finlaggan is a higher capacity vessel than…” Jun 27, 06:15
Young Lochinvar on The Guilty Party: “HMcH Whoa! Easy there tiger!! While I have a scintilla of sympathy with the thrust of what you are saying…” Jun 27, 04:17
Angus on The Promise: ““It’s time for action.” Those even more condemnable than the criminals are those who have deliberately failed to bring the…” Jun 27, 03:13
robertkknight on The Promise: “If it walks like a duck…” Jun 27, 00:48
Confounder on The Promise: “Yeah, but ‘No true Scotsman…yada, yada, yada.’” Jun 27, 00:34
Confounder on The Promise: “False logic in spades, there, I think.” Jun 27, 00:31
100%Yes on The Promise: “Thank you to you both, I never knew that.” Jun 27, 00:23
Spartan 117 on The Promise: “Quite possible, but I think Occam’s Razor would dictate its more likely they are just a bunch of corrupt degenerate…” Jun 26, 23:52
Effijy on The Promise: “https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E6r5H6ZbK/?mibextid=wwXIfr Wee truthless the Baroness requiring her neck re-brassed.” Jun 26, 23:21
willie on The Promise: “Standard computer generated email response I suspect issued to anyone making a donation, with in this case, Mr Henderson being…” Jun 26, 23:16
sarah on The Promise: “When you’re sending the same email to a whole raft of people who don’t know each other and therefore don’t…” Jun 26, 22:38
robertkknight on The Promise: “What’s that stock response employed by other contributors to BTL in similar circumstances? Ah yes, I remember now… “Prick”” Jun 26, 22:09
Hatey McHateface on The Promise: “And if Police Scotland and the Crown Office charge various Scottish SNP names, and levy fines and other punishments on…” Jun 26, 20:31
