Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Jesus. Just give this up. "Tories" pulling the devious of trick of asking for a breakdown of expenses, and spotting the explanation was bullshit.

Yousaf doesn't wave around Liam Byrne's note, or accuse Sarwar of trying to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister. He does worse. Na na na we won the elections. He himself hasn't even won a council by election yet.

Hang on. Mortgage interest tax relief?! I'd have thought NI was a more progressive tax cut myself.

Great effort here by a Guardian BTLer- there are loads of Cybernat hacks there.

Labour is projected to win nine whole seats in Scotland.
Remember a few weeks ago when all the London pundits were projecting a Labour landslide.
I suspect they’ll be red faced and questioning themselves now…
Oh wait “experts” never get discredit just for being wrong, only for disagreeing with the establishment consensus.

I don't post there any more, but someone was on hand to point out that this was projection was a "poll by experts" (And probably in London, so presumably just as fallible as anything else.

Anyway, shortly afterwards, this dropped. I'm losing track of who the red faced experts are supposed to be.

Obviously, he's going to say something about this, but he really isn't very good. Nobody praised Thatcher's coal policy.

What's the SNP pitch to these areas now? Couldn't they spend a bit more of the Barnett Formula money there? Or use tax raising powes more? Or is it blah blah independence levers, like usual?

Ha ha. Is this the same party that ran for years on cutting corporation tax?

Is there a big state-planning vote in Scotland?

Yep, it's the same party. Couldn't Dundee use some of that money for its drugs problems? Or do the SNP consider that's dealt with because they announced that "Portugal" policy on drugs?

Scottish court rules UK government veto of gender recognition bill lawful

Will the SNP now campaign for UK-wide legislation to do what the Scottish bill did? It wasn't universally popular, to say the least. Labour plan a simpler process than now, but still based on medical examination. Are the SNP going to oppose that? Whatever the merits of the bill (and clearly not everybody opposing it has understood it) the SNP and Greens may have got a bit carried away with the idea of Scotland as being different and more liberal to us reactionary English. Well there's a fair bit in that, the SNP have a lot of Brexiter voters who may not be that different to the "Red Wall" voters in England.

Souter apparently back. He's more of a Salmond type donor than a Sturgeon-Yousaf one. Not sure this is a great idea unless they're absolutely skint.

Predictable effort here from the MP for Dunfermiline and West Fife, David Brent.

Just say "would need higher taxes but the countries we most admire have those and are richer".

You'll be amazed to find that the council tax freeze pulled out of Humza's arse isn't anything like funded. SNP Councillor with her COSLA hat on has to explain.

He gets so much awful shit, I'm sympathetic to him. But he's not very good. I wonder if Kate Forbes, who can mostly add up, will be brought back at some point in the not too remote future.

Mourdant Tweeted quite a funny joke at the SNP’s expense. MP Deidre Brock failed to find it amusing.

“The Tories have given us a joke minister for common sense, looks like we now have a minister for clickbait.

“Scotland does seem just a big joke for her, the brief seems clear to rubbish and insult Scots every week in business questions. Of course she’s not alone, it seems to be Tory policy these days. https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/polit ... np-367136/

That told her

In the video posted to X, formerly Twitter, Ms Mordaunt is heard taunting Ms Brock and the SNP for misplacing a fragment of the Stone of Destiny.

However, the party said the stone chip has been held securely for the past 15 years and has never been considered lost.

This doesn't look good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68032233

All Nicola Sturgeon's WhatsApp messages during the pandemic appear to have been deleted, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, said the former first minister appeared to "have retained no messages whatsoever".

The hearing in Edinburgh was also told that her deputy John Swinney's WhatsApp messaging was set to auto-delete.

Ms Sturgeon has previously said she has "nothing to hide" but not clarified if her WhatsApp messages were deleted.

The UK Covid inquiry, which is sitting in Scotland for three weeks, was taking evidence from senior civil servant Lesley Fraser, director general corporate at the Scottish government.

It’s rather odd how all those in power had auto-delete. I would assume it was the automatic setting but I still have all my messages from that period, and I’ve switched phones twice.

Anyhow I think Labour do make great strides that the SNP will have another leadership election before the next set of Holyrood ones (sorry Therese Coffey I shouldn’t be so offensive).

What?! Excise duty is collected where it's paid- does he think that the duty Scots pay on prosecco should be sent to Italy?

Nicola Sturgeon's certainly more popular than she has been for a while.

Embracing her inner Malcolm Tucker

That's a parody account.

Poe's Law applies.

Incredible. No worse than what Bozo was accused of with India, of course, but I don't think he put that in an emal. And of course India trade negotiations were a current thing. A hypothetical Spanish veto to Scotland's EU application, much less so.