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.
Aidan on Push The Button: “Thanks Geri – that’s really helpful, I’ll peruse the rules. BTW – when I’m doing that, do you think I’ll…” Apr 29, 13:17
Aidan on Push The Button: ““I don’t have a spare 30 seconds right now” has got to be one of the weakest most pathetic reasons…” Apr 29, 12:57
Geri on Push The Button: “AI Dan Stu is the owner of this site. Not you. He isn’t looking for a moderator either. It’s none…” Apr 29, 12:55
Northcode on Push The Button: “” I can’t think of a single comment of yours…” Of course, you can’t… but I already knew that. I…” Apr 29, 12:27
Captain Caveman on Push The Button: ““Why would a unionist do this, on an [sic] Scottish independence website? Are you being paid mebbies?” …. DUH. I…” Apr 29, 12:07
Aidan on Push The Button: “@Northcode – I can’t think of a single comment of yours that: – is relevant to the blog post; -…” Apr 29, 11:51
Northcode on Push The Button: “Thank you, James… your sentiment is greatly appreciated.” Apr 29, 11:34
Northcode on Push The Button: ““Seems The Donald – bein the maist powerful (Scots)man in the warld – mebbe aspires tae be King o Scots?:”…” Apr 29, 11:31
Northcode on Push The Button: “Read my comment again and you’ll see most of it is grammarcheck generated copy and paste. You compare my ability…” Apr 29, 11:25
Aidan on Push The Button: “Yeah I bet you would, because at least half of my posts are embarrassing whatever incoherent, easily disprovable nonsense argument…” Apr 29, 11:10
Southernbystander on Push The Button: “No, this isn’t a correct analysis and you give yourself away by saying blue voters are at best ‘stupid’ but…” Apr 29, 11:05
James on Push The Button: “Adrian; do us all a favour and piss of to the daily mail website or wherever it is you belong.…” Apr 29, 10:53
James on Push The Button: “Adrian; I’d rather read Northy’s posts all day than any of the specious, divisive unionist bollocks that you seem to…” Apr 29, 10:51
Alf Baird on Push The Button: ““a king of England addressing Congress” For thon’s whit he is, King o the English Imperial State; he’s nivver been…” Apr 29, 10:50
Aidan on Push The Button: “I doubt it only took you five minutes but whatever, it’s a complete waste of your time. James Cheyne needs…” Apr 29, 10:25
TURABDIN on Push The Button: “OF PASSING NOTE. Mr Trump said US founding fathers like John Adams and George Washington “might be absolutely shocked” to…” Apr 29, 10:21
Northcode on Push The Button: “It took me a mere five minutes, including the time it took to copy and paste the grammarcheck generated stuff,…” Apr 29, 10:09
Geri on Push The Button: “AI has been caught red handed lying to its customers, issuing refunds to customers against company policy & being all…” Apr 29, 10:09
Geri on Push The Button: “I wouldn’t trust him. He’s probably setting it all up for the American takeover. Canada is one of their future…” Apr 29, 10:00
Aidan on Push The Button: “What an absolute load of rubbish. Imagine spending your time writing all that.” Apr 29, 09:50
Northcode on Push The Button: “After more than 300,000 years of enthusiastically embracing stupidity, homo sapiens – the modern human – has not only merely…” Apr 29, 09:36
James Che on Push The Button: “Mark Carney ex – governor of the bank of England, not the Bank of Great Britain or of the Bank…” Apr 29, 08:28
James Che on Push The Button: “Fearghas, Thank you for contributing those snippets of information, much appreciated,” Apr 29, 08:08
Bilbo on Push The Button: “You would think this is a parody but it is actually real as per Linkedin link shows that he is…” Apr 29, 07:26
Peter McAvoy on Push The Button: “In the original statement of the article,there are two more options press both at the same time to cancel each…” Apr 29, 02:15
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Push The Button: “GROUP SINGS AT LONDON MARATHON IN WAKE OF SCOPE TRANS-DEBACLE Disability charity Scope has come under fire for dropping a…” Apr 28, 23:21
Iain More on Push The Button: “I se that mark Carney the Canadian PM is to introduce a Canadian Sovereign Wealth Fund. I guess he saw…” Apr 28, 22:55
Mark Beggan on Push The Button: “To argue with a fool only creates two fools.” Apr 28, 22:34
Geri on Push The Button: ““it is not mandatory for you to read my posts or comment on them.” I wasn’t the one crying. You…” Apr 28, 21:11
Chas on Push The Button: “Geri It seems that you think of yourself as the site moderator! It is not mandatory for you to read…” Apr 28, 20:49
