JJ

The scuffle today seems totally overblown to be honest. Not condoning the eejits who felt the need to follow Labour around just to shout at them. Can't see the point. The fall of the Scottish Labour Party is nothing to do with the Conservatives as was mentioned earlier. It's been happening slowly for years, and it all came to a head after the independence referendum where the Labour Party were hand in glove with the Tories without having anything of use to say. I genuinely can't remember a single useful thing that came from the Labour Party out of that. They just hammered home the Red Tory line that's been thrown at them by some for a while. It doesn't help that many of them seem to watch to tactically swap votes with Tories to try and keep the SNP out in some places. I know there's a lot of Conservatives who are voting Labour to save Jim Murphy's skin, and in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, the Labour candidate will be largely ignored (polling about 6%) as Labour members down there vote Tory. I'll be voting Green on Thursday, but I can absolutely see why anyone with a left of centre viewpoint is deserting Labour up here and voting SNP instead. At the end of the day our democracy up here hasn't really mattered at Westminster for a while anyway. We sent 41 Labour MP's and 1 Tory last time and got the Tories. Life was much easier for the Westminster establishment when we just shut up and voted Labour. Now we've stopped doing that it's apparently an "affront to democracy." You couldn't make it up. As I say I won't be voting SNP on Thursday, but cannot blame a single person for doing just that. The Labour Party in it's current form either needs badly reformed or completely replaced. They're being replaced up here. Let's hope that they figure it out and rediscover their radical history, instead of marching to the beat of the Tory drum on welfare and austerity, and pandering to UKIP on immigration all to not scare off middle England. Once proper Labour comes back, people might reconsider.

Actually ended up agreeing with CT there. And she rules. And aye Gemmill I can vote for myself. I still have a vote, and I'm standing in my own constituency, so there's that absurdity.

Looking forward to seeing CT spin this as a good thing for the Tories. It kinda highlights in a way why Labour have been so complacent over the past wee while, as yet again the best reason to vote Labour is "they're not the Tories" which is fair in some sense as a Tory government is an utter disaster, but it's still not a good enough reason to support Labour's plan. Unfortunately our democracy is set up that way where Labour will always be strong purely because they're the only party big enough to beat the Tories on their own. Honestly I feel like Ed Miliband deserves a chance to be Prime Minister and I think he'll do a reasonable enough job, but with no great enthusiasm could I go out and vote for this Labour party, and indeed I won't be voting Labour. Interested to see what effect this has.

Not a great fight. If that was on the undercard you'd have got distracted and turned away after a few rounds. Easy Floyd win. Excellent performance, but it doesn't lend itself to an exciting fight to watch. You can appreciate his brilliance while not being particularly excited watching the fight. First time in ages I've bothered to watch boxing. Back to the UFC for me.

Must have been nuclear weapons that stopped Operation Sea Lion. What? They hadn't been invented yet? Never mind then...

If they were so scared of the democratic process in Scotland, why did they fight so hard to keep us? The mass hysteria of the press against the SNP is only strengthening the SNP support's resolve. And I say this as someone standing against an SNP candidate.

It takes 48 hours to deploy, after we've got permission from the US. What does it deter exactly? If anyone wants to attack us in a situation where we might use Trident to retaliate, we're already fucked. Maybe if we don't bother to renew Trident we can solve poverty in our own country for essentially free. But of course, that would mean us getting our priorities right. Your point on Pakistan is certainly worth talking about, but you seem to conflate the idea that if we stop giving money to countries with nuclear weapons we can have nuclear weapons of our own. Trident is a cock waving look at us status symbol that is illegal to use, can't be fired discriminately, costs far too much, and is part of Britain's very odd strategy that "the world is a dangerous place, so let's ensure we keep it relatively dangerous" which ensures that nuclear disarmament is permanently impossible. Maybe if we stopped living in an age where we think we're still a colonial power we can start looking at this debate objectively.

Miliband gave the game away on Thursday when pressed on whether he would actually press the button. He said absolutely not. Anyone can look at that if he ends up PM and assume that it's not a deterrent anymore. It's an ornament. That article is hilarious. Trident isn't a deterrent. It's a symbol of status. And as the UK loses most of it's world status, some are desperate to hold onto it. And how do we protect it? By promoting conflict disguised as promoting peace. Britain is both promoting nuclear disarmament while spending money on nuclear weapons. It's ass backwards.

"We have to build a new house every seven minutes because of immigration." Is it just me who thinks that sounds suspiciously like something that would create a lot of jobs?

Farage's problem yesterday was that he thinks he speaks for a silent majority, but hasn't yet realised he actually speaks for a small, but noisy minority.

Once for one of my quizzes thought I'd come up with the best false question ever for a true or false. My question was -Robin Hood was once banned in America because stealing from the rich to give to the poor promoted communism. Until I googled it and found out the state of Indiana banned it in the 50's for that reason. Bastards.

Couple of days late, but this is still the best tradition.

Ok. Even I laughed. Trident is the most expensive ornament going. Can't be used. Can only be fired indiscriminately which makes it illegal, and who is going to be the maniac who actually fires it? It's a complete nonsense. 75% of Labour's candidates for this general election support the CND, but Labour don't know what they're doing, so naturally they support renewal. We simply can't afford to renew it. £1.5 trillion in debt with poverty at an all time high and no clue how to close the deficit (except of course ramping up the failed ideological austerity program whoever wins) is the economic argument. The moral argument is just as obvious.

They also had this from a member of the policy unit and a vice chair of their East Lothian branch. Vote SNP get Tory, but vote Tory so you don't get SNP. It's a weird message Labour are sending out. They might aswell just admit they'd be most comfortable with a Labour/Tory coalition and be done with it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Merry Christmas fuckers

Again, I agree and I've said that already in this thread. But I'll take the guy with no substance standing up for the important issues affecting real people than the guy with no substance standing up for a corrupt multi-national financial service.

Oh I absolutely agree. But doesn't mean they get a free pass whatsoever.

It took me three goes, but I finally got through that hideously boring letter from "Jo" that the press were lapping up like it was the most hilarious letter ever written. Yet again, the problem with all the Brand bashing, is that it has very little substance. It's really really easy to kill the messenger. Unfortunately, it seems like no-one knows how to kill the message. Obviously, Brand is a bit of a scatterbrain and hasn't nailed down his true direction yet, but at least his intentions are good, which is a lot more than can be said for the financial sector. Trivialising it and turning it into a diatribe about cold pasta just gives the impression they still feel they are above the law and hold everyone who bailed them out after their recklessness in continued contempt.

Happy birthday Gemmill. Don't worry. You don't look a day over 61.

Brand wasn't great. Calling Farage a "poundland Enoch Powell" was a phenomenal line, but other than that there wasn't much to it, or Russell really.

Meant to add aswell, we have the Focus E15 Mums up in Glasgow last week at the Radical Independence Conference. His exposure of their campaign has been invaluable for them, so I stayed to listen to them. Utterly fantastic group.

Agree wholeheartedly with this. The biggest problem is that he doesn't have the answers, but his overall body of work has been brilliant so far. That the media are seeing him as a threat and starting to try and discredit him is always a positive. The true left is rising in the UK. People like Russell Brand will only help.