General Election 2019 - AND IT’S LIVE!

[Pet Jeden]

1 hour ago, Londonwell said:

Devo max klaxon!

Here's an idea. If it's a hung parliament or a tight Conservative margin - how about Sturgeon offers SNP support to deliver Brexit for England in return for all reserved matters coming back to Scotland. Just leave the monarchy (for now), defence on a 5-10 year programme as agreed between Holyrood and Westminster, and an NI style option to be half-in half-out of the EU? Too Loopy?? Always though Sturgeon should have gone for something like this when May was sinking. But her knee-jerk chanting of "we hate the Toaries" probably precludes any cold. hard-headed deal with Boris to deliver 95% independence. We would wake up one morning in 10 years time and find it was 100%.

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, Pet Jeden said:

Ah but, but. That's not what the people would have voted for. In this situation we would need a further People's Election or a Confirmatory Vote, surely. That's how the logic works, yes?

Referendums are a recent innovation in UK politics, first was held in 1973 over Ireland and that didn't go well. The most recent one has been a disaster, just to sort out party politics over an issue that was well down the priorities of most people, but created a massive schism. We're used to General Elections giving one party complete rule, now we're probably going to have develop cooperation between parties for anything to get done, like most advanced countries. Compromise and realism, might be a good thing.

[Londonwell]

8 minutes ago, Pet Jeden said:

Here's an idea. If it's a hung parliament or a tight Conservative margin - how about Sturgeon offers SNP support to deliver Brexit for England in return for all reserved matters coming back to Scotland. Just leave the monarchy (for now), defence on a 5-10 year programme as agreed between Holyrood and Westminster, and an NI style option to be half-in half-out of the EU? Too Loopy?? Always though Sturgeon should have gone for something like this when May was sinking. But her knee-jerk chanting of "we hate the Toaries" probably precludes any cold. hard-headed deal with Boris to deliver 95% independence. We would wake up one morning in 10 years time and find it was 100%.

Brexit in any part of the UK isn’t good for Scotland. The SNP know this and act accordingly.

[Alan Stubbs]

Brown and Blair's pro-market, anti-regulation agenda only served to hyper-accelerate Britain on its path towards a now-chaotic level of geographical and general economic inequality. Even now, after a supposed backlash from the neglected north (which tellingly starts about 1/6th up the island), Britain seems determined to destroy any prospect of a functional, equitable society.

I feel pretty hopeless about Britain ever reforming itself and while that is the case, I couldn't care less whether its recent leaders have come from Edinburgh, Kirkcaldy or Timbuktu.

[KingRocketman II]

5 hours ago, alta-pete said:

This is the bit that gets me - and their individual competence is perfectly fairly up for debate - but the U.K. has had Tony Blair, Robin Cook, Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy, Malcolm Rifkind and any number of others that have had serious influence over the direction of the country.

I reckon Scotland has had a disproportionate influence on the wider U.K. population in recent history than we have ever been entitled to. And if you listen to the various shouts on here about the ‘gammons’ - at Ibrox (I doubt) and daahn saarf - I’d say that’s a good thing for everyone.

So why, when we’ve historically always punched above our weight, do we want to pick a fight? We’ve historically run the whole U.K. anyway, so why cut ourselves off from our ant farm?

of those individuals you reference, in what way have they acted in the (best) interests of Scotland in influencing the wider UK? all of them have a connection. to Scotland - some more tenuous than others - but I would struggle to consider one instance where they considered in the first instance the benefit to Scotland in anything they did.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

This is the bit that gets me - and their individual competence is perfectly fairly up for debate - but the U.K. has had Tony Blair, Robin Cook, Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy, Malcolm Rifkind and any number of others that have had serious influence over the direction of the country.

I reckon Scotland has had a disproportionate influence on the wider U.K. population in recent history than we have ever been entitled to. And if you listen to the various shouts on here about the ‘gammons’ - at Ibrox (I doubt) and daahn saarf - I’d say that’s a good thing for everyone.

So why, when we’ve historically always punched above our weight, do we want to pick a fight? We’ve historically run the whole U.K. anyway, so why cut ourselves off from our ant farm?

Please don't ever confuse that list above with people whose primary achievement or focus was ever the advancement of Scotland. Ming Campbell, are you being serious ?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Ok, fair enough.

Indulge my hypothesising but say we did win independence on a (say) 55/45 vote - I doubt the break will be any easier than Brexit. But once we do get to a deal on our leaving the U.K. would that not also have to go to a confirmatory vote? I imagine the 45% (or even the (say) 20%) switherers might not like how the negotiated independence settlement might look?

Independence has never been the back of postage stamp detail that Brexit was.

[BFTD]

I’ll stick my head above the parapet....

Can anyone tell me what they hope to achieve by there being a hung parliament and how they expect that to pan out?

Cliches about ‘just keeping Tories out’ need not respond. How would it actually take us forward?

Wife was watching Lord of the Rings over the weekend. First thing that occurred to me was "OK, so the ravening hordes of Mordor are at our walls. We could fight to repel them as best we can, even though failure seems inevitable, but what would that achieve?"

Even if you believe that it's impossible to get work done without absolute power for some reason, putting up a fight will at least delay the Tory army from sinking their pointy teeth into the soft flesh of our children. Thank you.

[Antlion]

8 hours ago, alta-pete said:

This is the bit that gets me - and their individual competence is perfectly fairly up for debate - but the U.K. has had Tony Blair, Robin Cook, Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy, Malcolm Rifkind and any number of others that have had serious influence over the direction of the country.

I reckon Scotland has had a disproportionate influence on the wider U.K. population in recent history than we have ever been entitled to. And if you listen to the various shouts on here about the ‘gammons’ - at Ibrox (I doubt) and daahn saarf - I’d say that’s a good thing for everyone.

So why, when we’ve historically always punched above our weight, do we want to pick a fight? We’ve historically run the whole U.K. anyway, so why cut ourselves off from our ant farm?

Hitting every BritNat cliche there - “punching abound our weight”, we Jocks get plenty of influence, and a dose of ethnic nationalism in imagining that being born in Scotland makes one somehow more likely to give a f**k about Scotland (which, historically, has shown not to be the case - Scotland has always had a huge number of politicians who can’t wait to sell the place out for glory and power down south). 

[NotThePars]

That Telegraph front page is pure rattled. Have to hope that internal polling in the Tories is showing them something they desperately don’t want to see.

[Paco]

That Telegraph front page is pure rattled. Have to hope that internal polling in the Tories is showing them something they desperately don’t want to see.

Looks like it’s claiming that the ‘NHS for sale’ document came from secret Russian sources, that Comrade Corbyn is donning fake specs and a moustache to meet behind the bins on his campaign stops.

Wasn’t it dumped on Reddit months ago?

[Detournement]

2 minutes ago, Paco said:

 

Looks like it’s claiming that the ‘NHS for sale’ document came from secret Russian sources, that Comrade Corbyn is donning fake specs and a moustache to meet behind the bins on his campaign stops.

Wasn’t it dumped on Reddit months ago?

 

I just read the story. 

The name Ben Nimmo rang a bell. He was part of the Integrity Initiative which was previously exposed as an MoD operation pumping out anti Corbyn propaganda.

 

 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, alta-pete said:

This is the bit that gets me - and their individual competence is perfectly fairly up for debate - but the U.K. has had Tony Blair, Robin Cook, Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy, Malcolm Rifkind and any number of others that have had serious influence over the direction of the country.

I reckon Scotland has had a disproportionate influence on the wider U.K. population in recent history than we have ever been entitled to. And if you listen to the various shouts on here about the ‘gammons’ - at Ibrox (I doubt) and daahn saarf - I’d say that’s a good thing for everyone.

So why, when we’ve historically always punched above our weight, do we want to pick a fight? We’ve historically run the whole U.K. anyway, so why cut ourselves off from our ant farm?

Using the same argument but turning it around, if Scotland does indeed have this fantastic talent pool of politicians, then why would they all suddenly become "incompetent" when running a Scottish Government ??

Surely this should be a reason to go for independence rather than oppose it ??

[Dons_1988]

Alta Pete generally strikes me as pretty switched on but ‘we’ve had a Scottish prime minister’ is a fairly shite argument against independence.

[Detournement]

It looks like Ben Nimmo's company Graphika work with the US Department of Defense. 

So we have the US government putting out anti Labour propaganda to deflect from the protests against Trump's visit and the NHS trade talks. 

It'll be interesting to see how hard the BBC go on this. The Guardian put a half hearted story up so it's obviously being pushed. 

[Jeff Venom]

We've had more influence than we've been entitled to, wha's like us, eh? [emoji3526]

[Adamski]

Weather forecast on my phone currently predicting snow, a high of 2 degrees, and a low of -3 on Election Day (and also snow and similar temperatures the two days before). Clinging on to the hope that that might hit the Tory vote disproportionately.

[Mark Connolly]

9 minutes ago, Adamski said:

Weather forecast on my phone currently predicting snow, a high of 2 degrees, and a low of -3 on Election Day (and also snow and similar temperatures the two days before). Clinging on to the hope that that might hit the Tory vote disproportionately.

Broken hips or full on death?

[ICTChris]

They used to claim that poor weather favoured the Tories as their voters had cars whereas Labour voters had to walk.  Not sure that holds these days.

[Adamski]

I would have thought that bad weather would hit the Tories harder: older people less likely to venture out, people in the country having trouble reaching their polling station, etc.