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?
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Lorncal @ 23 April, 11.07 writes: « John Money was not “tragically misguided”, Fearghas. He was a PDfile » —————…” Apr 24, 00:23
Lorncal on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Confused: that pilot would have been female with XX chromosomes – therefore, intersex or DSD. DSD people are still either…” Apr 23, 23:22
Lorncal on How To Get Away With Crimes: “John Money was not “tragically misguided”, Fearghas. He was a PDfile and made those two boys (the twin brothers, both…” Apr 23, 23:07
Hatey McHateface on The Pit Of Vipers: “I swore a solemn oath to respond to you only once in any 24-hour period. But I don’t mind breaking…” Apr 23, 23:02
Hatey McHateface on The Pit Of Vipers: ““stop the Dog Whistle politics” What other politics would most of them have left if they stopped that? “we have…” Apr 23, 22:52
Hatey McHateface on The Pit Of Vipers: “Cheers, YL. It’s good to be back. Thought I’d drop in to see how close we are to Indy. Damned…” Apr 23, 22:43
Confused on How To Get Away With Crimes: “this is all a deep rabbit hole one thing we distinguished in the past was – transvestite – someone who…” Apr 23, 22:35
George Ferguson on The Pit Of Vipers: “A pit of vipers is the strapline for this article. I just watched Question Time from Aberdeen, so an appropriate…” Apr 23, 22:33
Confused on How To Get Away With Crimes: “psychopathy runs at 100% incidence in rabbis, imams, spooks, freemasons and city/wallst bankers.” Apr 23, 22:32
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “HMcH Please re-post once you’ve sobered up and can make your point with clarity. Thanks in advance.” Apr 23, 22:29
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “HMcH Welcome back! Shouldn’t you “be sorting out” a failed business you neglected by spending 24/7 on here, or, did…” Apr 23, 21:52
Hatey McHateface on The Pit Of Vipers: “Big election in 2 weeks, Dan. You should be serious, mature, and focused on getting the voters out for your…” Apr 23, 21:28
Dan on How To Get Away With Crimes: “A new fiscal year just starts and GERS takes an early hit, whilst Scotland dodges a bullet by having the…” Apr 23, 21:27
Hatey McHateface on The Pit Of Vipers: ““if true Scots in here want to indulge in some easy sport by destroying unionist ‘arguments’” True Scots enjoy the…” Apr 23, 20:41
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “What exactly has that got to do with me?” Apr 23, 20:36
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “AI Dun I see the latest polls (for what they are worth) have the Scotchland Conservative (and) Unionist (Members) in…” Apr 23, 20:11
SilentMajority on How to tell when Kezia Dugdale is lying: “I guess it continues then….starting a new job, with new ‘friends’….then alienates herself on Day One by voicing ‘respect’ of…” Apr 23, 19:45
Sheepshagger on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Self-pitying men can be like unexploded devices – when it dawns on him that nobody will ever rise to his…” Apr 23, 19:37
Hatey McHateface on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Or just vote for somebody who promises to “drain the swamp”. Boot out the ECHR. Take a chainsaw to the…” Apr 23, 19:20
Hatey McHateface on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Hmmm. Bananas don’t have cores. Plenty of people enjoy bananas so ripe they look half-rotten. But to be serious for…” Apr 23, 19:15
Hatey McHateface on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Fair play to you 100% Yes, but two weeks out, I doubt any of the usual suspects are even remotely…” Apr 23, 19:05
Hatey McHateface on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Great post about psychopathy from Confused. Very light on detail about the type of people who call for the establishment…” Apr 23, 18:53
Hatey McHateface on How To Get Away With Crimes: “That’s the mother of all long reads. I got to here: “modus operandi – personal abuse, threats to doxx people,…” Apr 23, 18:44
Alf Baird on The Pit Of Vipers: ““For England, not that much changes” Indeed, following the supposed ‘Union’ in 1707, “for England nothing changed”, whilst “for Scotland…” Apr 23, 18:22
James on The Pit Of Vipers: “Look, everyone; Adrian used the word “Brigadoon”.” Apr 23, 18:04
Northcode on The Pit Of Vipers: “Due to heightened colonialist activity in this place it’s that time again: Ther scarce be a wird pit doun here…” Apr 23, 17:53
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “I agree it’s a hard sell to those who can’t accept their own deficiencies or come to terms with the…” Apr 23, 16:29
Breastplate on The Pit Of Vipers: “Aiden, You are correct that emotional attachment to a particular stance wins out over reason. Unfortunately, you seem to be…” Apr 23, 16:02
