stevo
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Posts posted by stevo
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FIFA doesn't know its arse from its elbow, either here or elsewhere.
How did the Rep of Ireland get away with commemorating the Easter Uprising of 1916 on their shirts?
Answer: just do it and don't tell FIFA. The self-serving arseholes are too busy shredding documents to notice.
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Slightly OT, but why has 'the SNP got to do better than this'? Unless you're an SNP member, why should anyone care?. It's yet another politician doing a bit of philandering. He won't be the last.
It's nothing short of miraculous that there are still those who seem to think the SNP divide their time between polishing their halos and illuminating us all with the sun shining out of their collective bahookies.
They're just politicians! Like any other.
Want to see another bit of cheap politicking? Check out Ms Sturgeon firing broadsides against Dave and Gideon's anti-Brexit campaigning, despite being nominally on their side. Not a word about staying inside the EU.
Not wanting to be seen as onside with the Tories clearly is more important to her than actively championing membership of the EU.
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As ex-Whitfield said "un believable" (although tbh, I prefer unbefuckinlievable")
Will the Kingdom's electorate call him on this next May, if not before? Three of Fife's four WM MP's are Labour. Any chance that the support for three (of five) Fife MSP's will prevail and lead Fife to follow the example set by those over the Tay Bridge?
Unlikely. The Holyrood by-election of earlier in the year was an opportunity for the SNP to steal the Cowdenbeath seat, but they didn't. If you can't create an upset at a by-election, my advice would be look elsewhere for your Portillo moment.
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No. It is up to Westminster what powers it has and they can taken away or added to as WM sees fit.
An early motion vote in Westminster tomorrow could make Holyrood disappear, it position is that fragile legally if not in actuality.
Absolutely. Whether they were aware of it or not, on the 18th of September 55% of the electorate reasserted Westminster's role as sovereign.
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Does the Scottish Parliament have the power to turn them down?
No. The Scottish Government cannot refuse the powers they have been given by Westminster. Once an Act is passed into law, that's it. They could apply to 'undevolve' allocated powers, even temporarily. But that would not play well with the voters I'd imagine.
What they can do (as with the tax varying powers) is not to enact them. With the income tax example, a future Scottish Government could elect to track the UK Government's income tax rates, and if they were so minded, quietly forget about the policy - unless and until the voters remind them otherwise.
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I doubt even 5% fell for THE VOW. I've yet to meet one No voter who switched from Yes because of it...
Indeed. It's important to distinguish the political panic that circulated in the last few days from the wall upon which the writing already was well before any of the concluding political shenanigans began.
Some analysis done by Ashcroft polls shows that - regardless of what anyone was telling the pollsters - the vast majority of Yes and No voters had made their minds up well before all this, with the Nos in a slim lead. The Don't Knows split pretty much 50/50 in the closing days. Add in the natural conservative (small 'c') element in all such polls which always slips slightly towards the status quo and the 45/55 is explained without reference to a single syllable uttered by any politician.
I wouldn't like to say which group has the bigger conceit of themselves, the politicians or the media. But it's a close-run thing.
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Given that Margo(?) amongst others publicly raised the intelligence services intervening risk I am surprised if the SNP did not have extensive private polling in place throughout to verify the result.
If they did not then they are asleep at the wheel.
They will have done. And not only that, well in advance of the day. There's not a major political party in the country which is not engaged in continuous polling of some sort, and poring over the results.
My guess is that the SNP were fairly sure of the outcome before the 18th. Their public face and official soundbites notwithstanding, any other serious perspective would have been delusional. Salmond is/was ambitious, but he isn't an idiot.
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Finding out if we were cheated is not blaming anyone, it is just the right thing to do.
Wallowing however is pointless.
I agree. Solid evidence is needed. We've had enough finger-pointing to last a lifetime though.
Theories on why the First Minister hasn't had anything to say on the matter...?
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Are the vote riggings just a collection of one-offs, simplistic unconnected illegal events immaterial to the overall outcome? Or are they they a campaign of endless 'small' swindles... Which then added to all the much more obvious large swindles swung it...things like media collusion, scaremongering, and adding Devo Max under No at the last minute.
You saw it. It was a 'war on all fronts'. This was the most direct and obvious front of them all. If you are not a cynic after seeing that what are you?
How many thousand unconnected, undetected events, large and small would it have taken to enable your theory to have come about? And would they all have been in favour of No? All of them? What's the likelihood, do you reckon...
Let's put this in context.
Would you have posted one single entry on this subject if the outcome had been Yes?
Would No campaigners have posted similar entries on this subject had it been No?
Therein lies the truth of this theory.
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Industrial scale...interesting phrase.
This is just about postal votes of course. Let's forget trivial stuff like evidence for now: I'm assuming you don't think that the majority of postal votes were fraudulently cast?
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Most addresses I looked up had 1 occupant (pensioners that had lived alone for years) in real life but the database had around 10 occupants. If these extra 9 people (who may not be real people) could vote then it's a huge issue.
I agree - but there are many factors involved in inaccurate registration of voters. Fraud is only one of them. To commit the sort of mass deception of the kind being claimed here would require undetected fraud on an industrial scale.
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I saw a database once (whilst in Thames House (Millbank)) of addresses in the UK and their occupants. I looked up places I knew and found that there were many more people listed as living there than actually lived there. Were/are these people allowed to vote? I don't know the answer.
That's another issue. It is an impossibility to ensure that 100% of any given ballot is precisely representative of the eligible electorate at the point of the vote. Could it be improved? Probably. Will it ever be perfected? Never.
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You whole post is ridiculous garbage but that really made me laugh. Yeah Stevo sure...
Which would you say is the most ridiculous aspect? I'm truly fascinated to find out.
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I've rarely read such complete junk than as I have on this topic.
This isn't Uganda in 1975. The means to 'rig' votes just doesn't exist.
Leaving aside the fact that we have a global reputation for standards in this field, on any given vote there are simply too many parties involved to ever mount any concerted dishonesty *undetected* (because that's the key word here).
Elections as a whole are not overseen by politicians, or the military, or the secret police, etc (as they are in certain other countries). The Electoral Commission guards its independence fiercely, and even if it didn't, an in-built safeguard is the local nature of how all elections are run. Different council areas mean independence from the larger governing bodies across a wide spectrum.
And even if *that* were not the case, there are the thousands of temporary employees involved in the count. These come from an even broader spectrum, but are largely people working either in the public sector or with administration experience. Is it possible there are a few 'wrong uns' amongst them? Certainly. But that's true of society as a whole. Could they co-ordinate a mass deception? Hardly.
Basically, if you're criticising the administration of our voting system, you are criticising the ordinary people who run our public services. They are the ones who in the most part make this thing work.
It is simply so wide of the mark to suggest that this or any election in this country is rigged that it belongs up there with the fake moon landings stories and every other crackpot conspiracy theory that are ten a penny on the net.
We are fantastic at self-criticisms, but believe this: when we get things right, we lead the world. And we get this stuff right.
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The SNP are currently projected to incease their seat total...
That's impossible to call.
You can make a stab at the FPTP result but the PR outcome is an unknown quantity. It's completely dependent on the number of FPTP seats won v. the percentage of votes taken AND the other parties' relative positions.
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Also the SNP will most likely not win two more majorities in a row but there is a good feeling that they could in 2016. So 2017 referendum is what I hope for.
This is the elephant in the room around this question.
Winning an outright majority in Holyrood is very tough. It was never designed to be an outcome. By all accounts 2011 was a fluke: it wasn't that the SNP won about 45% of the popular vote, it was that they won 45% AND the other parties' results relative to each other secured them 54% of the seats.
Put another way, the outcome could just as easily be the SNP take 45% of the votes and win about 38% of the seats because of the positions of the other parties. That's the nature of the part-FPTP, part-PR beast.
It really is a long shot - my guess the best the SNP could hope for is that they get enough support from others (eg the Greens) in a minority administration to push through another referendum bill.
All wear poppies at Wembley ?
in England v Scotland
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Well that's not going to happen.
It will be a fine. Probably in used notes down the cistern in the Wembley bogs.