Donathan

Yawn

Absolute garbage. I’ve no idea where this idea that Starmer is continuing all of Sunak’s policies. There’s some cross over of course, but the manifestos won’t be the same by any means.

That’s never a penalty for me but I’m not a qualified ref.

Lost them both. Ouch for the wee man.

Also there’s a lot of talk that these joint bids are a travesty for the fan. Unless you’re unlucky enough to be one of the three teams drawn to play in South America, the 2030 WC on the Iberian peninsula will be absolutely fine. So will euro 2028. I hope the tournaments are arranged sensibly such that most teams route to the latter stages takes place in a single country, and then it’ll be absolutely fine for the fans.

If they can’t do it in the usual summer slot, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it at all. Ramadan finishes on 10th December and the Winter Olympics doesn’t normally start until about a week into February so I guess you could start it on around Boxing Day with the bulk of the tournament going through January and the final taking place in early Feb just before the Winter Olympics starts. You could even have a super Sunday with the World Cup final in the afternoon then the Super Bowl at night.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it here but for situations like this can you ask someone to come along to Germany with the team to be part of the dressing room and an extra body on the training pitch but not officially be part of the squad or eligible to play in matches? Almost like an honorary coach.

You said he was willing to let people die rather than take “effective action” Excess death stats from around Europe shows that the action would not have been effective

Go back and look at the excess deaths per population of comparable European countries throughout the pandemic and you’ll see that our death toll in the UK was inevitable. We have the 26th higher death toll per capita from Covid at just under 2700 per million. Plenty other European countries are higher and others are just behind. Johnson’s problem was locking us down (which Sweden proved to be unnecessary) and then overseeing a culture of partying in number 10.

No - however I reject the idea that all nations must be independent sovereign countries. It helps when you divorce the concept of flag waving and national anthems and football teams from that of political, economic and military decision making. Let’s be clear, on the former Scotland is absolutely a nation. On the latter it is not, which is what the SNP seek to address. Personally I think it’s fine for the two concepts to be divorced and Scotland is far from the only country in the world where they don’t match.

I think what Renton is saying is that Scotland should go the full hog and become an independent nation, or fully accepted that they’re a region no different to Yorkshire or Pennsylvania or New South Wales. Am I right @renton?

So you’re just reducing the argument to “Scotland is a nation” then

On the bolded point, again it reduces the argument back to “Scotland is a nation” On the underlined point, I’m not particularly familiar with the level of home rule awarded to the examples I gave (or any other similar arrangements you can think of) but I’d be interested to learn about them and how they compare to the Scottish Parliament.

Yes sorry I double counted Cooper and missed out Hendry. The last squad had five pure CBs (Hendry, Cooper, McKenna, Hanley and Gallagher) plus two others who usually played CB for Scotland (Tierney and McTominay). Going into the tournament it was expected that McTominay would play CM given the absence of both Jack and McLean, but the emergence of Gilmour along with Hendry having a shocker in the opening match did push McTominay back to RCB. For this euros, Hendry and Porteous are both locks for me as well as Tierney who will play CB assuming that he and Robertson are both fit. Then you’ve got Hanley, Cooper, McKenna and Souttar competing for the other spots. The smart money is probably that three of those four will be on the plane. Last time we were very short on midfielders with Jack and McLean both missing the tournament and they were basically replaced with extra CBs and wingers rather than direct replacements. This time there will probably be more midfielders in the squad. If everyone is fit I think John Souttar might be the odd man out.

For me Scotland is a nation in the same way that Gibraltar, the Faroe Islands and Guam are nations. They enjoy national pride and have their own sports teams, but politically and economically form part of a much bigger nation. That’s absolutely fine. All I’m saying is that “Scotland is ruled by England” is no different from saying that “Orkney is ruled by Glasgow”

Two by-election defences today for the Tories. Labour should cruise home in Chris Pincher’s old Tamworth but the Conservatives might be able to take advantage of a split opposition vote to hold on to Nadine Dorries’ former constituency of mid Bedfordshire. Lib Dems were initially the betting favourites but Labour have campaigned heavily to bring themselves into contention. The Conservatives are now the favourites in this three way marginal and if they do hold on, questions will be asked of why Labour didn’t step aside.

That’s the thing for me, there are two reasons to support the movement of power away from Westminster to a more local decision making body. The first is that you just believe strongly in self-determination and decisions being made closer to home. That’s absolutely fine and is a reason to support not only Scottish independence, but also to eventually support regions breaking away from Scotland and forming their own micro nations. I would imagine that not many people fall into this camp. So then the entire argument gets reduced to “Scotland is a nation”

23 man squad is only really two players for each position plus a 3rd keeper. If everyone is fit, my current first and second XI is along the lines of: Gunn Hendry-Hanley-Tierney Hickey-Gilmour-McGregor-Robertson McTominay-Adams-McGinn Gordon Porteous-Cooper-McKenna Patterson-Jack-McLean-Taylor Ferguson-Dykes-Christie I can’t see Greg Taylor getting the call if he’s effectively the fourth choice LWB. I’m also not sure that both Jack and McLean would be needed when we have McTominay and McGinn that can drop into traditional CM roles, but bearing in mind that both players missed euro 2021 through injury it would seem harsh to leave one of them at home especially when both are coming towards the end of their Scotland careers. Stuart Armstrong doesn’t feature in my top 2 XIs but I’m almost certain he will be at the euros. If we consider that Gilmour, Patterson and Turnbull were the “extra” 3 players at the last euros (all uncapped before the pre-tournament friendlies) then the core 23 man squad included 3 Goalkeepers (Marshall, Gordon, McLaughlin) 6 centre backs (Hanley, Tierney, Gallagher, Cooper, McKenna, Cooper) 3 pure wing backs (O’Donnell, Robertson, Taylor) 2 defensive midfielders (McTominay, McGregor) 6 attacking midfielders (McGinn, Christie, Armstrong, Fleck, Fraser, Forrest) 3 strikers (Dykes, Adams, Nisbet) I think you’re certainly going to see more CMs next year and probably fewer defenders)

Have you got a link to any of these articles?

It will never actually happen in practice but if a Tory UK government offered the SNP a referendum in return for supporting them, the SNP would be mad not to consider it.

I was thinking the other day, there’s a strong case that out of the five Tory PMs of the 21st century, there’s a strong case that history will judge Johnson as the least worst one. You’ve got Cameron who called a referendum just to appease the right of his party, failed to campaign effectively for a remain vote and then fucked off leaving the country in a complete mess. You’ve got Theresa May who demonstrated a complete lack of the strong and stable leadership she preached about, leaving the country more divided than ever in the wake of the Brexit vote. You’ve got Boris Johnson who fucking locked us in our houses for a year and a half. You’ve got Truss who managed to single handedly tank the economy in a period of time shorter than a school summer holidays. And now you’ve got Sunak who has cancelled the most important infrastructure project undertaken since the channel tunnel and towed back on our net zero commitments. It’s hardly an easy choice with all five having such a horrendous record but from worst to best I’d rank them: Truss, Sunak, Cameron, May, Johnson.

Scotland is no more governed by England than Quebec is governed by Ontario or South Dakota is governed by Texas or Inverness is governed by Glasgow. The UK governs itself as a whole. When you’ve got one particular part of the UK making up over 80% of the population, it’s natural that they’d have the most influence. But “England” isn’t a single homogeneous group. Attitudes in Liverpool are very different to those in Yorkshire, for example. Ultimately in the context of the UK, Scotland gets the same influence than any other part of the country that has a roughly 5.5m population. This isn’t and shouldn’t be controversial and is exactly how government works everywhere in the world.

Good post!

There are many, many organisations who only pretend to be “Socialists”. Some of the Eastern European regimes in the second half of the 20th century would have Karl Marx turning in his grave.

Nor do I, but then again I don’t belong to a religious group which has been persecuted against throughout history and which a major world leader tried to (and nearly successfully) exterminate them less than 100 years ago. So perhaps the Jewish community should be cut some slack for wanting somewhere to call home.