No, it really hasn't. The BBC's lead political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, in particular, has been openly partisan. Whilst it may serve her short term interests, in the long term, it may come bite her in the bum.

My twitter handle made the national news in that particular scrum, when a friend - passing on the shit that was going down on FB - was accused of being a right wing sock puppet.

Yeah, I don't know the gory details of their past missteps, but I prefer to blame "left wing politics" becoming the persona non grata / third rail of certain, um 'democracies' (e.g. US, UK, and yes, Canada), on media conglomeration, and the rise of billionaire feudalism, at the expense of all life on earth (eventually... soon -ish). This UK GE, and the USian impeachment process, are both part and parcel of an existential struggle between human greed and human survival --> two go in, one comes out. And I'm fucking scared.  :-@

Hard to call really. Scotland is fairly well split down the middle on the independence question, and the vast majority can't see past that when evaluating Sturgeon.

At a place I worked around the time of the last indy ref i heard colleagues (mostly retirement age men) who were diehard unionists and idiots go on about how 'she's definitely shagging Salmond' and practically in the same breath say 'bet she's a fucking lesbian'.

They were also out and out racists, which was pleasant. Two of the old guys (we're talking in their 70s here) got sacked eventually for having a full on fisticuffs session (including one of them vaulting over the customer service desk to land a punch on the other :'D ), I'm not sure of the exact reason why it started but it was probably football related.


Apart from that she's got mixed reviews really. Anyone against independence focuses solely on the areas that are not going so well (mainly NHS and the, thankfully now dropped, 'named person scheme' where every child was to be appointed a named 'responsible adult' contact point with pretty ill defined reasoning and powers involved), where as those who are ambivolent or for independence I think generally think she's doing an OK job. Doing well in some areas, pish in others.

They've been in power for quite some time up here now, I think they've had to learn a hell of a lot in fairly short space of time and on the whole I think they're doing OK. I'll be voting SNP tomorrow, because a) I hate the tories and b) Scottish Labour is dead*. Their policies are largely in line with my views (certainly more so than New Labour, but not as much as Corbyn's Labour (which I don't agree with all of either)).


*they died around 1998 when they brought in devolution and it was revealed how much contempt Scottish Labour had for, well, Scotland. It just took a decade for the corpse to stop moving.

Anecdotally, big turnout, looking a lot closer than just a couple of days ago.

Exit poll predicting an 86 seat Conservative majority. :'(

Bit of a shitter for you lot, eh?

If Scotland gets another referendum (in spite of Johnson's implacable resistance), votes for independence, splits off the UK, and rejoins the EU, I wonder how citizenship and residency will be dealt with.

If Scotland gets another referendum (in spite of Johnson's implacable resistance) 

Rather than asking the UK Government for a legally binding referendum and getting refused, I have a theory the Scottish Government will get round it by somehow holding an advisory referendum instead. That'd be fucking hilarious.

And as ever, I'll re-iterate my belief that it would all be a lot easier if England elected to leave the United Kingdom if it wants to leave the EU.

Of course, what I'm really wondering is what the chances are of getting Scottish nationality in the event that things get even worse down here in Little England. It looks like I'll be stuck with fuckers like Johnson, Mogg and the Hugo Boss suited Raab as my rulers until I'm nearly sixty fucking nine years old and I'd like to be somewhere with a more humane care policy before fucking Sid legs it with all the NHS shares.

Incidentally, in true right-wing tradition, it seems like Gypsies and Travellers will be early targets of the benevolent Johnson administration with police powers to seize their vehicles and property (i.e. their homes) and intentional trespass becoming a criminal offence. That last proposal about trespass is an interesting one with even wider implications.

Oh my fucking god.

 :-((  :-((  :-((

Watching Peter Snow on the tellybox this morning show us round the virtual House of Commons was a fairly depressing sight. 

The left benches were full of blue, but the right was barely a quarter full of Labour's seats.  

What's even more depressing is the crowd of current and ex Labour MPs like Alan Fucking Johnson who have spent the last four years doing nothing but lying, writing, speaking, briefing against and generally undermining Corbyn and the Labour leadership, now queuing up to say that they have no responsibility at all for the loss and it's all down to Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum.

We don't elect our PMs like presidents. They get chosen by their party. But for years the media have worked to make it seem like a presidential race. That suits the right just fine. When all but a tiny part of the media are committed to support of right-wing candidates then I defy any left-wing "presidential" figure to still look presidential after 4 years of utter and total character assassination. And when the ruling party thinks fact-checking is a huge joke...

Sage words. I believe that Corbyn has stood still while other members have taken a step back to wherever they wash their hands, leaving him vulnerable and an easy scapegoat. Not that he didn't have a hand in the whole result. Standing on the Brexit fence and then throwing a whole host of manifesto pledges that promised everything to everyone at the last minute didn't do him any favours.

Given our dire need for people, reckon it'd be pretty much open borders on that front!

I don't think his brexit position was bad, but his presentation of it was awful. He need to go on the offensive with it from the off, and he didn't so it came over as weak. 

I've met him a couple of times and he does seem like a genuinely lovely guy, but does rather lack the absolute killer streak that's (sadly) required to survive the front line. 

You're quite right, it isn't the whole story. Labour would have benefited from some better strategic planning and the senior MPs were almost all in dire need of some presentation coaching. My heart sank every time Corbyn (or several others) was faced with a difficult question and almost always muffed it, or fell back on waffle. I can't believe they weren't better briefed on some of these really obvious questions.

I thought the manifesto was superb, but I also thought it was a huge error of judgement to only reveal the key features at the 11th hour. Nothing had time to sink in before Johnson and his tame media (many of whom are his personal friends) was able to drag the narrative back to Brexit with no time at all for Labour to shift the focus. As for the pledges promising everything to everyone, one of the points that needed to sink in in particular was that the spending was modest and similar to the levels of public spending and investment across Europe. The UK is unusual in Western Europe in that we have an essentially socialist welfare system funded on a very low proportion of GDP. Far more of our GDP is directed either by various tax incentives, or by very high salaries and dividends etc. to the wealthy which has created a huge wealth gap that is more akin to the US or Russia.

> My heart sank every time Corbyn (or several others) was faced with a difficult
> question and almost always muffed it, or fell back on waffle. I can't believe
> they weren't better briefed on some of these really obvious questions.

i.e. They're useless and learned nothing from last time.

> I thought the manifesto was superb, but I also thought it was a huge error of
> judgement to only reveal the key features at the 11th hour.

Four day working weeks is a great idea, but I doubt the average idiot on the street understands why, so it's a terrible thing to put in an opposition manifesto if you want to be taken seriously.

Also, consider the difference between "we're going to invest in improving broadband for everyone" vs "we want to take control of your Internet access". One of those is going to be far more popular than the other.

> As for the pledges promising everything to everyone, one of the points that
> needed to sink in in particular was that the spending was modest and similar
> to the levels of public spending and investment across Europe.

How often did anyone say "we're not overspending, we're matching the spending of [insert country with succesful economy]"? Or "here's the spending of previous Labour governments. Here's Tory government spending. Can you spot the difference?"