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The Modern Politician 339

Posted on February 10, 2026 by

A play in three acts:

And you thought ours were spineless.

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Learning Insanity 154

Posted on January 14, 2026 by

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.

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Governing For Beginners 108

Posted on January 12, 2026 by

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.

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The Fear Of The Briar 47

Posted on December 31, 2025 by

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?

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Contempt Of Government 53

Posted on December 19, 2025 by

This is actually pretty serious.

Because, y’know, you can call us old-fashioned purists or sticklers or whatever if you like, but government ministers probably shouldn’t openly lie in prepared statements to the High Court in order to pervert the course of justice.

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The cost of failure 117

Posted on December 04, 2025 by

For several years now, this site has recorded how the SNP’s continued existence is now entirely dependent on UK state funding. The party would simply go bust without Westminster money. And how precarious a position that puts it in is sharply illustrated by the latest release of donations income from the Electoral Commission.

In a 12-month period running up to the last UK general election, the UK state gave the SNP a little over £1.3 million.

In the corresponding period for the last year, after the party was reduced to just nine seats, that figure plunged to just over £0.4 million, a drop of over £0.9 million.

And that’s money the SNP can’t afford to lose.

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Ginger beer and fruit and nuts 40

Posted on December 03, 2025 by

We miss the days when this was parody, not “progressive” ideology.

But we are where we are.

And hey, it’s great news that their adult roles are still open to all.

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Searching And Looking 226

Posted on November 22, 2025 by

Disgraced ex-policeman and notorious vexatious serial complainant Lynsay Watson is having quite the meltdown on the groomer-and-paedophile haven Bluesky tonight.

Let’s listen in.

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How To Create Racists 565

Posted on October 29, 2025 by

This really is an extraordinary headline, for multiple reasons.

Because what actually IS “the rise of Reform”?

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The Music That Nobody Likes 145

Posted on October 24, 2025 by

Perhaps the key graphic from last night’s by-election in Caerphilly is this one (green means Plaid Cymru in the context of Wales):

In the end, Plaid won pretty comfortably in what had been predicted to be a very tight contest between them and Reform, with a majority of almost 4,000. But Plaid aren’t going to be the next government of the UK, so what’s the real story?

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The Icarus Folly 133

Posted on October 22, 2025 by

Last month, when half a football team of armed police ambushed and arrested comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport for a couple of tweets, we said this:

Today, even more swiftly than we thought, this happened:

Rarely can a hand have been overplayed so badly.

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The Incredible Sulk 160

Posted on September 08, 2025 by

Last week we introduced readers to Sophia “Tarquin” Brooks, the 18-year-old boy who Graham Linehan is currently on trial for supposedly “assaulting”, and in particular his connection to disgraced former policeman and serial harasser Lynsay Watson.

(From reporting of the proceedings at Westminster Magistrates Court, it sounds very much like Watson has been directing and influencing Tarquin’s complaints to the police – which had originally been dismissed as baseless – and was largely responsible for the matter getting to trial.)

But Watson isn’t the only middle-aged trans-identifying man with whom “Tarquin” has a seemingly close relationship when it comes to the relentless, vindictive persecution of people who believe in biological sex.

We think (but haven’t been able to verify) that that’s Watson on the left of the thumbnail of the above video, in the facemask and with a brown bag amid extraordinary scenes as Tarquin left the court after giving his evidence.

But the burly, blond bespectacled man at the centre of it, who appears to be acting as some sort of official representative for “Tarquin”, is Stephanie Hayden – born Anthony Halliday, who changed his name in 2005 to Steven Hayden shortly after being released from the Sex Offenders Register (more on that below) before obtaining a GRC in the name of “Stephanie” in 2017.

Hayden is a convicted paedophile and self-described lawyer who, like Lynsay Watson, dedicates his entire life to the persecution of gender-critical campaigners.

And as remarkable as it might seem to anyone who read our previous piece, Hayden may be the more toxic of the two.

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