Alibi

Aye, I can just imagine you being a wee clype. Same as you try to portray anyone who questions your slavishly "SNP establishment" views as somehow harming the indy cause.

Wings only became toxic to some because he was publishing things that people didn't want to hear. Thing is, he's been proved correct on most things. I think his comments section has attracted a lot of folk who are shall we say not actually indy supporters. He's a decent journalist although he can be a bit abrasive. Far rather read his stuff than the wall to wall shite you get in the Herald now. It's a lot higher on the scale of toxicity, especially the comments which are now restricted to those who have a subscription to the unionist rag.

Away and fuck yourself, you pathetic cocksucker. Are we supposed to just accept whatever shite comes along and say nothing? I don't know what changed the ethos of the SNP, or the leadership at least, but something did, and I get the impression it happened round about 2017. We had had the brexit vote and things looked good for indy at first, and then Nicola Sturgeon absolutely Hibsed it. At first it was the ludicrous electoral campaign to stop brexit when she should have been pushing the line that the only effective way to stop brexit for Scotland was independence; then she gradually shut off all options to achieve indy. She got a boost from her generally reasonably decent handling of Covid, but since then it's been all downhill. Her capture by the zealots of genderwoo, her apparent fear of actually having the best people for the job in ministerial posts in case they posed a threat to her, even things like that bowing and scraping to Prince Charles - she became someone who didn't look like a leader of an independence movement. I don't know what happened, but in 2017, something changed. I've been SNP since Winnie Ewing won Hamilton, but I hardly recognise what the party has become in recent years. I sent along to a branch meeting a few months ago, and the hostility from many when I tried to have a reasonable discussion about indy matters was astonishing. I couldn't believe how many of them seem to regard Alex Salmond as being evil incarnate. how short are there memories. and then we have subservient wankers like you popping up every time anyone posts anything that is not absolutely in line with the current spineless leadership's perverted agenda. I genuinely can't fathom how we got there, and my conclusion (seemingly shared by many others) is that it's been done deliberately; by whom I really don't know but it's a fair bet that the British state is somewhere in the shadows orchestrating the whole thing. The SNP haven't even issued a murmur about the ridiculous supreme court decision and the possibility that it could be appealed or overturned or at least challenged in some way. Where are the leaders that we need? Yousaf sure as fuck doesn't fit that bill (but of course you, Aaid, support everything he does. Who's paying you? Rant over. time for lunch.

Can't work out just how the SNP have got themselves into such a mess - almost as if they have tried to sabotage indy deliberately with a load of really stupid ill-conceived policies. Has the party been infiltrated at a high level? This type of car crash doesn't happen by accident. Radical change is needed urgently, starting with getting rid of the utterly woeful Humza Yousaf and his vague and ever-changing strategy to get indy. He really looks like a dead man walking every time he opens his mouth, and it's made worse that so many folk are pretending that they think he's great. A blind man can see he's drowning.

My daughter decided to call her Dolly as when she was wee, her favourite film was Hello Dolly, and she's also a big fan of Dolly Parton. I take her (Dolly, not my daughter) to get her coat trimmed every couple of months and she comes out looking bald, just like your photo above. The curls grow back in about a week. Cockapoos seem to be very good natured dogs and they love human company. She's curled up on the bed at the moment having a wee snooze before her afternoon walk. Better than working & good exercise.

Sadly I won't be able to make the "Communities Cup" (?) game against your Skunks on Saturday - I have to look after Dolly the Cockapoo and I can't leave her on her own for that long. I don't think it's the done thing to take your dog to football matches these days. Anyway I'd be worried some St Mirren fans would see her as a nice change from rat for tea

Interesting reading this thread. I'm now 71 and sort of semi retired, picking and choosing which jobs I take on. Mortgage paid off a few years ago, and get a state pension which is a pittance compared to most of the civilised world, and also have income from premises that were my old office, bought in 1987 with a loan and paid off as quickly as possible. I put money into a personal pension fund for many years but it's difficult to put enough in and with the low returns an annuity wasn't an appealing prospect, so I used my fund to buy the other half of my building. It's currently vacant as the previous tenants have moved, so if you know any dentists looking to set up in Dumfries in a ready-to-use 5 chair surgery in a prime location, let me know! The rental income way outperforms anything I could have got from an annuity or other means of monetising my fairly modest pension fund. I now spend a lot of my time looking after our wee Cockapoo, bought against my will and of course she adopted me and goes everywhere with me - currently stretched out on the landing sleeping. Go for a long walk with the dog most days, do most of the cooking, play football once a week (supposed to be walking football but it's just football but a bit slower), try to maintain the garden, about to construct a greenhouse, there is so much to do that I don't have enough time. Take as many holidays as possible. Never watch daytime TV. Season ticket holder at Cappielow. Recently had lens replacement surgery and have thrown away my glasses - amazing what a difference it has made to be able to see perfectly (better than 20:20 I'm told). I'm lucky because I am still reasonably healthy, but having an income over and above the state pension does help - I'd hate to have to live on the state pension without any other income. It's obscene compared to most other countries - another result of people voting No in 2014.

Because there are a lot of people who don't appear to understand science. Seems to me though that the idea of making rules based on "gender" rather than sex is the root of most of the problems.

Of course sex is biological - I don't know what the other definition is but I'd bet it's some gibberish made up ignoring scientific reality, and probably in line with the wishes of the likes of Kirsty Blackman and her pals who believe people can actually change sex.

Regarding the polling figures, bear in mind that the policies of each party are not really under detailed scrutiny at the moment as there's no campaigning going on. Labour's policies (basically handed down from London) include: pro brexit, anti indy or even a referendum, anti freedom of movement, anti single market or customs union, anti immigration, want to bring back tuition fees, prescription charges, NHS privatisation, bridge tolls, hospital parking charges - need I go on, fill in any blanks yourself. Labour have pretty much moved to where the Tories were about 7 years ago. Imagine what will happens to Anus Sarwar when he has to defend their manifesto in a head to head televised election debate. I think already there are signs of the SNP vote share, affected by the performative theatre of Police Scotland and their "investigation" backed up by intense media coverage and distortion, starting to recover. I would be surprised if Labour in Scotland would win an election on the basis of Sir Starmer's ideas which are in direct opposition to what Scotland votes for. If what they are offering is acceptable to a majority of the people of Scotland then fuck them, they deserve all they would get. There is still time to turn things round - the problem is that Yousaf and his clique of Sturgeon's cast off dullards aren't listening and don't have the imagination to do anything about it. any MP or MSP talking about seeking extra devolved powers can do one - that's not the aim of an independence party when it's clear as daylight that WM is intent on blocking everything and anything. We're in a prison and it's time we had a jailbreak. That should be the absolute priority.

Get a Revolut card and you can load it up with any currency you want, and more than one currency. I hold a stash of Euros on it and use it when in Europe with no problem. Also works with sterling. Can do currency exchange on the app. In Spain recently I never even saw any actual Euros - it was all done with my phone which is linked to my Revolut account.

I think we have to accept that although Scots built the modern world, we are held back by those amongst us that have no imagination. In a nation of intelligent people, indy support would be at the level seen when Norway voted for indy - something like 99%. What sort of people believe Scotland can't support itself but nevertheless are perfectly happy to be, as they believe, subsidy junkies? Have they no self respect?

I get your point; however that change in view is only because of a referendum. You can't then ban referendums and remove the mechanism for monitoring ongoing opinion. It's the refusal to allow another referendum that makes it a prison. If the SNP don't make the next election (and every election after that) a referendum on indy, they can expect to be nearly wiped out. What point is there in voting for a party that won't do everything possible to achieve its stated aim, its raison d'etre? Fed up with mandates being squandered, kicking the can down the road, acceding to the diktats of an English court. fed up with our MPs warming the benches at Westminster and being good little parliamentarians. If they're going to be there, they should be disrupting the place on a daily basis. As noisily as possible. Make it unworkable. But no - they go on about trying to get more powers if Labour get in. What's the point? That's Stockholm syndrome writ large.

I would guess it took the Green from Greenock and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Ok, so this is not a voluntary union. It's a prison. What an absolutely useless leader Sturgeon has turned out to be. Absolutely hibsed it at every opportunity. I see polling figures are pretty awful today. Ok, it's Yougov and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw the stone of destiny, but maybe it will be a wake up call confirming that Yousaf being shoehorned in as leader has been a horrendous error. No way he is going to get the SNP back on track. If people are currently considering voting for a pro brexit anti indy anti freedom of movement anti immigration party, clearly they are thick as mince and deserve everything they will get. I just hope when the next election campaign starts, people realise what Labour are offering and come to their senses.

Yo.

I asked chatbotgpt to write a haiku about Morton. It came up with this: Green and white unite, Morton FC takes the field, Pride of the Clyde shines. It was doing well until, well, until the very first word. Green? Still some development to do, I would suggest.

I'm not a lawyer, but is there not a process whereby a biased court (which is how I regard the SC on this matter at least) can be over-ruled at a higher, international level? The UN for example. If there is no democratic means, what are we expected to do? NS has really fucked things up over the last 6 years. Instead of holding a closed shop "convention", which will lead to nothing, they should be putting indy front and centre at every opportunity. I'm not interested in this vague "building support for indy" shite. Support grows when there is campaigning for indy; it doesn't grow when the whole thing is put on ice. As for Flynn's statement about getting more powers from a Labour government, if those were his actual words, I hope his Dundee United get relegated, and relegated again the next 3 seasons after that.

I started out at uni doing physics and maths, but changed to civil engineering. With hindsight I should have done mechanical engineering, but when I was at school we got no careers guidance whatsoever. The world is very fortunate that although I was also offered a place to do medicine, I turned that down as I didn't actually have any interest in it. Just put it on the form as I had to fill in the last option box & my parents, both doctors, wanted me to do medicine. My youngest daughter has just finished her first year doing mechanical engineering, and it's great to see that there are so many girls doing engineering subjects. When I was at uni, there were practically no female engineering undergraduates.

It used to be the case that it was accepted that all we had to do was elect a majority of indy-supporting MPs and that was it. The referendum route was brought in at a much later stage. Now that that route has been closed off (and why are the SNP not appealing that decision that was always going to be made by a unionist establishment body like the English supreme court? In fact why did they ever start down that route?), it seems to me that reverting to the original majority of MPs tactic (provided that indy is stated in the manifesto) should be considered. Of course the yoons won't like it, but tough shit. All they need to do to stop it is get a majority of yoon MPs in Scotland. Why do we always need to avoid infuriating WM? I have no faith in Yousaf doing anything to try to get us our independence back. He'll procrastinate just like NS did from 2017 onwards.

That's not really the same though. the eligibility rules are made up by the football authorities. They could change them at any time to require international players to have been born in the country they represent. It's not the same as ignoring scientific facts because someone "feels" they are not actually what they are. And GRR is not the problem; it's the concept of self ID that is the problem.

Seriously? That question is key to the whole debate, and you say it's not worthy of a response. of course Nicola Sturgeon has pulled the rug from under you, tying herself in knots in the process. it's a simple question and only requires a Yes or No answer. You know, a bit like a referendum.

Oh, and I note that you didn't answer my question in my final paragraph. Quelle surprise.

I'm not having that. That is clear defamation. Just because someone disagrees with some of your shite doesn't mean they're a bigot. I'm certainly not sad, and in the current climate I don't regard myself as old. Away and shite a porcupine, you pathetic wee troll.

That response suggests that the software has been designed to filter out anything that might offend someone. That pretty much makes it useless for humour.