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The Great Hollowing 140

Posted on January 20, 2025 by

The wild thing about this poll isn’t the headline that six months after winning a massive landslide majority, Keir Starmer now trails Nigel Farage – leader of a party with five MPs to Starmer’s 411 – as the electorate’s choice for best Prime Minister.

It’s the little grey numbers sitting quietly at the bottom.

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A crisis of democracy 274

Posted on January 14, 2025 by

In the recent US election, the Democrats made a huge play out of the notion that the very concept of democracy itself was at risk if Donald Trump won.

And yet his eventual victory was unquestionably democratic. Not only did Trump win under the electoral college system by a huge 312-226 margin, and secure control of both the Senate and the House Of Representatives, he also beat Kamala Harris in the popular vote, by 50% to 48%. By every possible count and measure, Trump was the legitimate winner and has a clear mandate to govern for the next four years.

Over in the UK, however, things aren’t quite so neat and tidy.

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Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing 130

Posted on January 09, 2025 by

As more horrific experiences from survivors of rape torture gangs surface from across the UK, we must focus not on knee-jerk political posturing but on the root cause that led to the failure of these children by our society.

Political inaction has now opened the door to inevitable political mileage, nurtured from stoking vengeance in a rightly-angered public. Those only interested in creating cultural conflicts no more support justice for survivors than those who allowed this abomination to fester by looking away or worse, covering up the problem.

For any functioning society, inflicting unimaginable pain on children on an alarming scale seems unimaginable. Yet, the evidence has been in front of us for years – so why has immediate action to ensure the safeguarding of children – and vulnerable adults – not been a pressing priority?

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Dreaming Of Perfection 276

Posted on January 07, 2025 by

Any rational assessment of Scottish (or indeed UK or world) politics at the moment tends to be negative and depressing, so since it’s a new year we thought we’d make an extra-special effort at writing something positive.

Unfortunately that does require us to enter the realm of fantasy. But hey, everybody needs a little holiday from time to time, right?

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The New Britain 562

Posted on December 03, 2024 by

So things are getting pretty strange.

Polling in Scotland, the UK and Wales in the last few days has shown Great Britain taking a fairly heavy swerve to the right after just five months of Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Labour now lead Reform (who have five seats to Labour’s 411) by just three points in the UK and are even more remarkably now in THIRD place in Wales, a country where the party has won every single election for over 100 years.

Scotland, meanwhile, is heading for a hung Parliament in 2026 in which – as this site has been telling its readers for the last year and a half – the only possibility of a stable administration will be an SNP-Labour coalition.

We live, as they say, in interesting times.

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What Went On 468

Posted on November 28, 2024 by

The proceedings at the Supreme Court this week were a tough follow even if you could get the court’s abominably bad livestream to work. They’re all archived here now, but non-lawyers will probably glaze over quickly during the nine hours of intense legalese.

We’re not allowed to clip up any illustrative sections, on pain of possible contempt of court, so perhaps the best way to explain the key parts of what happened in a vaguely comprehensible way is by showing you some commentary from social media.

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The Unbargain Bin 215

Posted on November 23, 2024 by

The King And Queen Of Cringe 262

Posted on October 11, 2024 by

Honestly not sure which of these is the most nauseating.

Click the pic to enlarge, if you can stomach it.

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The Scissor Sisters 56

Posted on August 31, 2024 by

The Manipulation Of Perception 212

Posted on August 13, 2024 by

In many ways, the fabricated, hysterical furore of Humza Yousaf Vs Elon Musk is the ultimate in summer-silly-season politics stories.

Absurdly plainly, the former First Minister ISN’T going to take any legal action against the billionaire owner of Twitter. He only likes bullying small nurseries, and even then he doesn’t follow through. He didn’t even sue us for calling him racist a few months ago, so there’s zero chance he’s going to square up to the world’s richest man.

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The Strangulation Of Scotland 163

Posted on July 31, 2024 by

We’ve been off for a little break in the country, and as far as we can tell we’ve missed absolutely nothing in the moribund world of Scottish politics. We did, however, arrive back just in time for something mildly interesting, or at least revealing.

It’s the latest episode of a new podcast by veteran Scottish political journalist and broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby and jobbing opinion columnist Alex Massie, inventively titled The Ponsonby And Massie Podcast.

The first 35 minutes or so weren’t very noteworthy, other than the curious omission – when predicting the makeup of the next Scottish Government – of the idea of a Labour-SNP coalition, which to this site remains by far the most practical and logical outcome of the 2026 Holyrood election.

But then things got a little feisty.

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One Just Man 73

Posted on July 24, 2024 by

David Davis may be the last of his kind – a libertarian Tory from a council-scheme and grammar-school background, and also one of the few remaining big beasts occupying the political jungle of the back benches.

(He could in fact have been Tory leader, and would have been if David Cameron and George Osborne hadn’t teamed up to defeat him in 2005 after he won the first ballot.)

He resigned from Cameron’s shadow cabinet in June 2008 on a principled issue of civil liberties (winning the subsequent by-election with a massive 72% of the vote) and from Theresa May’s Cabinet over Brexit, and he was one of a tiny handful of MPs prepared to defend Julian Assange from extradition.

And in 2022 it was Davis who rose from the back benches to tell Boris Johnson to “in the name of God, go”.

So on the rare occasions when he leads a Commons adjournment debate, as he did last Thursday evening, those with an educated eye for politics sit up and take notice.

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    • sarah on The Pillars Of Sanity: “That is excellent, Lorn. Please send to the best newspapers for wider viewing. It makes the topic so clear and…Jul 20, 10:52
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    • agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Notice also that Upton is described as “she” despite having a cock and bollocks.Jul 19, 19:34
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    • Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “In the colonial situation there is only colonial governance: which implies “a government and a judicial system fed and renewed…Jul 19, 19:04
    • Dave Hansell on The Pillars Of Sanity: ““The days when police forces across the UK acted as pet goon squads for every misogynist incel with a grudge,…Jul 19, 18:39
    • Dave G on The Pillars Of Sanity: “As a matter of strict law the Northumbria Police judgement does not apply in Scotland since the jurisdiction of the…Jul 19, 18:30
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    • agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@ Alf “On 8 December 2023, the Outer House of the Court of Session, part of Scotland’s highest civil court,…Jul 19, 18:15
    • Confused on The Pillars Of Sanity: “balance is restored to the force www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbIL8C2JJ0Jul 19, 18:12
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