renton
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Posts posted by renton
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9 hours ago, Trogdor said:
Swinney is catastrophically bald and has a ministerial track record to boot. He's better than Humza but it shows the real dearth of political talent up here. A safe pair of hands until some of the SNP talent from Westminster can be redeployed following the GE.
As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.
2007 is a long time ago. The constitutional question has sunk any prospect of using the Tories or LDs to get a budget through. Even in those days Labour would demand and get budget concessions and still not vote for the bloody thing because the Bain principle is still the organising principle by which the Branch Office live.
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If someone isn't mocking up John Swinney and Kate Forbes in the style of the American Gothic painting, then there is a trick being missed...
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21 minutes ago, ICTChris said:
Interesting use of 'return'. When did the SNP stop governing from the mainstream?
Presumably a swipe at the Greens. The SNP will now try and pin literally everything that's gone wrong in the last 18 months (give or take an embezzlement charge) on the well meaning, but entirely naive shoulders of the Greens.
They need that to stick to have a hope.
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22 minutes ago, Salvo Montalbano said:
Mods, please. Heard enough of that non-word when Chuckles was getting his crown.
Aye, that's fair enough.
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You'd think they'll be trying to avoid another 4 week navel gazing job and just get someone crowned and in.
It's basically whoever the central belt MPs think can save their bacon, and continuity isn't likely to be high on folk's agendas.
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7 minutes ago, AyrExile said:
Will Swinney be the continuity candidates continuity candidate? Can't see many others who could hold the line and avoid an early election being called
Not sure continuity is so highly prized im the SNP these days.
They want a purposful reset, they need a line drawn under the last year and a bit and some fresh energy.
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11 minutes ago, RAITHROVERS84 said:
Where’s Easton??
I think he’s away end of season.He may well be, but doubt it's got anything to do wiyh him being absent from the squad today. It's surely likely just being ultra cautious on any minor niggles (no Jack Hamilton either, for example)
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At the same time, do "Scottish" Labour really want to get into a Holyrood election now? Can imagine it'd screw up a lot of Starmer's planning and would prematurely expose Labour's GE positioning, as well as spending money they might need for Scottish seats in the GE later...
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40 minutes ago, ICTChris said:
Technically speaking, Yousaf doesn't have to resign if he loses the vote. He can just say "f**k it" and go on.
Anas Sarwar has now lodged a motion of no confidence in the Scottish Government. Douglas Ross' motion is in Yousaf himself so if Yousaf resigns then the motion will be dropped.
Yeah, Ross doesn't want to trigger an election that would see his party wiped out, so an interesting game of chicken foing on here, escalating from the notion that the Greens are shitehawks who'd take leaving government on the chin.
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3 minutes ago, lichtgilphead said:
I've not miscounted. As explained above, the presiding officer only votes in the event of a tie, and normally votes to keep the status quo, irrespective of her party affiliation.
64 each will mean that DRoss'sVONC will fall.
Having said that, the SNP haven't had much luck with parliamentary officers holding to convention of late....
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SNP would only need Regan + one other to join to win, but assuming they didm't it's hard to see how the Tories or Labour could coalesce around each other in a GE year to kick the SNP out, and if they couldnt find one in the time required before an election were called? Would Labour necessarily want a Holyrood election now to be followed by the GE?
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Just now, houston_bud said:
One thing I picked up on when Harvie spoke was that he said, the SNP members had rejected the right of the party. I mean, he might be technically right, but Forbes still picked up nearly half the vote, despite being quite open about her feelings on same sex marriage and abortion.
Yeah, for Yousaf it's a chance to reset and blame any amount of issues on the Greens laps. He probably thinks that he's mounted the kerb in terms of where Scotland lies socially and wants to avoid getting killed in a culture war with Labour.
He'll wait a while then convince Forbes to come back in, try and bump his numbers up a few pc and see how it flies. Not a bad gamble assuming the GE is this side of the next Scottish budget.
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I doubt Yousaf could have risked letting the Greens dump his government without having umpteen other column inches talking about weakness. Also, eaiser to reconcile the Forbes wing of the SNP now you'd imagine.
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Assuming we stay in the championship, a shopping list for me would look like:
New contracts for Easton, Byrne, Matthews
New LB, new RB, 2 x CBs*, 1x winger, 1 x forward.
*if I thought Watson had more in him I'd be happy to keep him around, but point is we need to be running with at least 3 specialist CBs.
The winger should be a proper speed merchant.
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34 minutes ago, philpy said:
I'm now wondering why we replaced Gullan with rudden. Gullan was always a good impact sub, and also scored a few important goals for us. Rudden on the other hand, I genuinely can't think of anything he's done that's been worthy of noting.
Scored one and set up one against Ayr, scored the opener against Dundee United back in February. Set up one against ICT in the loss at home.
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13 minutes ago, JS_FFC said:
Wouldn’t surprise me. Do we know if the Green grassroots are as socially conservative as their English and Welsh counterparts? My gut feeling is probably not because the thinly veiled transphobes would surely go to Alba instead.
The other question re Greens is would they be willing to put independence to bet for 5 years to help Sarwar become FM if they liked his offering on the climate? I know they’re technically an independence supporting party but I’m not sure they’re as ideologically wedded to it as the SNP.
Nah, the Scottish Greens are socially liberal. They'd have chucked Bute if Forbes had gotten the gig over Yousaf in the first place.
My guess is that the Greens would support a minority Labour government if they came out the biggest party, but it'd be a bit of a tightrope electorally to say that, given their principle vote comes from SNP constituency voters voting for them on the list. Mind you in a world where the SNP might need list votes for once, the Greens could well get squeezed anyway.
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2 minutes ago, JS_FFC said:
Binning off the Greens would surely open up the government to a no confidence vote which could force it to hold a snap election where the SNP would be expected to make fairly heavy losses and possibly lose the keys to Bute House?
It might be the Greens who bin it.
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Yousaf is looking increasingly time limited now. I suspect a lot of the Murrell damage is already priced in, but if polling does take a further kicking then the SNP will need to do something and the unfortunately styled "continuity" candidate will be in the firing line.
Actually think the Greens reaction to recent events around Cass, Puberty blockers, the missed environmental targets and also CT reform will be interesting. Their grassroots are hopping mad and given how the SG party internal democracy works, if their disgruntled elements can push through an EGM it's not unthinkable that the Greens end up being the ones who break the Bute House agreement.
I think that would end up being really damaging for Yousaf and he'd look for all the world like a lame duck.
Then it'll be a case of how long until a GE and whether or not the SNP think it's still a recoverable situation.
If it is, they'll coronate Forbes as a social conservative who can avoid a lot of the culture war issues and who will look like a decisive break with Bute House, the Greens and previous continuity. A lot on the progressive wing won't like it (and I sure as hell don't like social conservatism) but they'll swallow it if it gets them over the line.
If it isn't they'll let Yousaf take the kicking and he'll take down the previous continuity with him. The party will then engage in some soul searching and I reckon it'll be one of the relative newbies that takes over.
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Be interesting to see how much fresh damage this can do, and how much was already priced in for the SNP.
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So, any fun shit from the Q+A?
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3 minutes ago, Ro Sham Bo said:
Actually 3. Brechin, Alloa and QoS. Although it would be harsh to call the QoS defeat an epic failure I suppose.
Ah, so it was. We're gonna win the play offs some day.
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5 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:
On the face of it, this is pretty much the perfect scenario for approaching the play-offs. Three games to try things out with the pressure off. Then the play-offs. I’m quite looking forward to it.
Of the 7 play-offs we’ve been involved in, is it only two most recent ones where we’ve been playing for promotion to the top division?
2015-16 season we beat Hibs 1-0 at Starks with Harry Panayiotou scoring, then it was a 2-0 defeat at Easter Road. I only attended the home game. No doubt a birthday party or some such nonsense at the weekend back then.
Then 2020-21 season where we beat the Pars then lost to Dundee.
Two epic failures dropping into, then failing to get out of league 1 between those.
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16 minutes ago, Ro Sham Bo said:
I'm sure we'll follow the trajectory Ayr have this season if we stick with Murray. All the signs are there.
Who do you want instead?
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10 minutes ago, Ro Sham Bo said:
At no point this season have we played brilliantly. The only difference now is we aren't getting the late winners.
Whoever we play in the play offs, we're out. I'll be quite happy for us to bank the second place prize money and regroup over the summer.
Nah, not having that. At no point have we been the complete package but that's not the same as saying we havent had brilliant games.
We've probably seen some of the best attacking play from a Rovers team in a very long time. The fact we haven't defended leads very well is a feature, not a bug of the system. We swashbuckled our way into a good position, and you do it once - it's a fluke. Do it ten times and it's a product of superior fitness and gameplan.
We obviously should be looking to rebalance a bit in the Summer, regardless of league but to turn your nose up at some of the attacking moves that have picked apart more than one side in this league is daft, in my opinion.
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The Kate Forbes thread
in The Politics Forum
Posted
Regardless of whether independence happens or not, the polarisation of the Scottish parliament down those constitutional lines negates any attempts at compromise 'across the isle'
So the queation of where you find someone willing to vote with the SNP even if they agree on the principle of the motion being voted for, remains open.