ThatBoyRonaldo

Booked on the Friday night service down in a few weeks for old times sake (and the fact it was a tenner). Hello nightbus my old friend. Hopefully I'm not old and past it now and it'll still be tolerable enough.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Pretty good, can see why she is the literary flavour of the month. Thought it was quite well constructed in a slow-burn type way of things being revealed to you without necessarily spelling it out straight away. None of the characters are massively likeable though I thought

I was only using tennents as an example - not bothered at all about going out my way to find it, always think you have to try the local stuff when you are on holiday.

On the topic of the beer sizes, what's the etiquette for ordering? Is it the done thing to go up to the bar and say '2 schooners of tennents and a pot of Carling' or similar? If you just go up and say '2 tennents please' what would be the default size they give you?

Filet-O-Fish though. Always knew he was a wrongun.

To be honest if there's one person in the SNP who I trust has done the right thing throughout this it's the FM. It's quite galling that the people who seem to have done all the right things - i.e her and the complainants - are the ones being most harmed by civil service incompetence and salmond and his acolytes, who have acted disgracefully in my opinion.

If any of our parliamentarians are thinking of moving against the FM they need their heads examined because it's a moronic idea - although to be fair moronic describes a few of the Westminster group pretty well. Robertson and Russell are right wing wanks and Cherry repeatedly shows herself to be a bit of a dafty - e.g her antics on twitter recently. The next leader won't be an MP anyway, no matter how big their delusions of grandeur get they need to get it into their heads that they are strictly the B team. Mackay and Yousaf are the only two serious contenders who wouldn't be a disaster long term imo. Both are too sensible to want rid of the FM now. Part of the problem is the famed SNP discipline. There has been such little debate in recent years that it's impossible for anyone to really stake out a proper ideological position. The party needs a proper left wing for activists to rally behind rather than have literally all internal debate be about the timing of indyref2. For all that labour are a mess at the moment, at least you know where people stand.

In a similar tale of the allegedly rough area of a nice town/city - I used to live in Rose Hill in Oxford, which upon googling it before I moved I discovered was 'the murder capital of Oxfordshire'. Regardless of how laughable a title that is, in fairness I was slightly perturbed when the first thing I saw on the bus into the estate was a burned out car, but for all the time I lived there it was totally fine. Just felt normal in comparison to how affluent the rest of the city was.

The below is maybe relevant when speaking about Govanhill. Personally I've never been so obviously couldn't say how bad it is per se but I do think the press coverage is highly suspect. Eg stuff like the widely shared story recently about children being openly pimped out on the streets, for which I don't think there was ever a shred of real evidence presented? Regardless of levels of deprivation I don't think you would ever see a story like that written about somewhere with lower levels of immigration. https://athousandflowers.net/2018/02/11/govanhill-how-a-square-mile-of-glasgow-was-weaponised-by-the-right

We were very good second half, bit of a kick in the teeth to lose to the odd goal. That said, we weren't as good first half and I felt the first pen was a bit soft so maybe some stuff evened out over the course of the game. Would agree with the poster above who said we only know how to play one way - against any half decent opposition we look vulnerable, and in a related issue, I feel like for as long as I've been following the rose regularly we've looked ever so slightly lightweight against teams that like to mix it. Need to go out and find some big mean b*****ds for the tough games, imo.

For all that fact checking is not all that useful politically - it would be preferable that the independence campaign not turn into a movement of cranks and conspiracy theorists. The picture thing shared by various nutcases in the article below is really quite ugly. https://theferret.scot/fact-check-salmond-probe-leslie-evans-westminster/

Classic - why would you want a couple hundred extra on the gate anyway

No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein. I'm a big fan of hers but hadn't got round to this yet - Trump fatigue probably, there's only so much you can read about him when his antics are in the news every day. A very good book though. I think Klein's strength is that she can write about left wing politics in a completely clear and concise way, which not many people can.

The stuff about a transition period and how we're going to negotiate with rUK is totally valid tbh. After Brexit it's plain to see that the UK would not respond to a successful independence vote rationally - negotiation in good faith would be all but impossible for much the same reason that negotiations with the EU have been a disaster, that is to say, the grandstanding and cakeism of right wing politicians eager to pander to British nationalism. If the argument is going to be 'no deal brexit is a disaster therefore we should have what will likely be a no deal independence' then that complicates matters. As it happens the SG does in fact have 'Revenue Scotland' and 'Social Security Scotland' which have presumably been consciously set up to have the potential to take on the functions of an independent country, but they would need to be seriously beefed up with staff/expertise/funding in the event of an independence vote.

I've been trying to work out who he looks like all day - it's Chic fucking Charnley