SNP in secret attempt to challenge Supreme Court ruling on sex

[Igneococcus]

I couldn't despise those fecking weasels more if I tried:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/89b42f06-fc36-4f06-98b1-d7b93c175463?shareToken=e40f182647b48214917896a4ae34328b

Yes, but isn't Grok wired into X? Ie it's the "house" AI, and thus 100% under Musk's control?

Reform (and the Greens) face one massive problem though: incumbency advantage. Neither party have many MPs at all whereas Labour and the Conservatives have lots. People know the incumbent and unless they're very unpopular this gives them a starting advantage. Where there are two potential rival options, the support of one (ie not the incumbent) is going to get squeezed, especially if there's an anti-Reform vote. There's so much information on the Internet now so it's easier to vote tactically. There was loads of this at the last election.

Take for example Walsall and Bloxwich, won by Valerie Vaz of Labour on 33% of the vote. Other candidates were Ind 20%, Reform 19%, Conservative 18%, Green 6% and Lib Dem 2%. The electionsuk forecast is 'safe Reform'. You would expect Reform to scoop the Tory 2024 vote. But you'd also expect the Green vote and perhaps the independent vote to take fright and switch to Vaz to keep Reform out.

Or South Suffolk, also predicted Reform, at the last election Con 33% Lab 27% Reform 19% Lib Dem 13% Greens 8%. Unless the sitting Tory MP is hopeless he'll at least be familiar and to win the seat Reform have to take his vote. You could even have a split vote on the right and Labour taking the seat.

There were also a lot of stay-at-homes at the last election. Possibly they could turn out next time for Reform but I bet they won't.

There's a very long way to go until the next general election and it would only take a modest recovery in Labour and Tory support to result in a Parliament just like the current one.

I don't disagree with you at all. Other than 1688, we don't do revolutionary change like the French. It may be that 2029 turns out like any other GE, a Tory or Labour result, perking up or down for LDs, SNP a show in, Farage/Polanski/Corbyn Sultana as also rans.
The nearest thing to a quiet revolution here was Brexit, Farage may really need that level of turnout, and a real imperative to put to the voters, to pull off a commensurate overturning of the odds.

The Party that loses the most from Reform is the Tories.

Ofcourse not, that would involve doing something that actually benefits women (the old fashioned type) and children.

Two MPs & as of the Christmas issue of Private Eye, 41 councilors. Perhaps more by now.

May I suggest a Private Eye subscription? Unlike much of the media, they pay attention to what Reform are doing when in power & yes, hard though it may be to conceive, they're doing splendidly at doing worse.

What? The Eye that has ignored the trans insanity in the last decade?
Less satire, more establishment mouthpiece.

X is a small platform compared to other SM y'know. Meta could heamorrhage users from now to the next GE & still be streets ahead of X & all the rest of the competition. Its salience is overstated due to the fact that under the previous management it functioned like a Slack channel for the entire media, & journalists are still studding articles with quotes from X as a matter of habit. Also, because it's small, it's an easy target for politicians too frit to act against Zuckerberg.

Edited for dyslexia, some may remain.

It's all Rah Rah Sex Work for this lot, and never mind the rape gangs. But OUTRAGE at an AI creating images of abuse - they seem to be more angry at that than at actual children being abused, for some reason.

I mean, they're not. They just literally don't care. They want a stick to beat Elon with, that's all. It's ridiculously transparent.

If the males could all get over their dick-swinging contests we might actually be able to get on with sorting things out.

I have to disagree, we GC women are in the majority, it’s simple common sense.

Sure, GC women in the majority. Ditto GC men.
But women showing real attitude, will vote against these vested interests? I'm not so sure.
So many I speak to will eventually show they're GC, but don't evidence much energy.
Obviously this doesn't apply to MN.
But maybe that's my point, we're the motivated ones.

One things for certain Reform couldn't do a worse job than the current parties are doing.

I'll take that bet. They said that about Labour and look where we are.

Reform are amateurs. Not one of them has any experience in government (exactly the problem with the current Labour government)

(Not even going into the misogyny and racism problem of both parties.)

I dread the thought of them gaining power but I fear it's going to happen.

Alex Massie in the Times:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b5b3af5c-525a-4117-84fc-f8cf0efd920c?shareToken=042230dd95712c51bd6ad5e8119101bb

Thanks for the link to the Times article

" And so is this question: Is Scotland still a cautionary tale or is it now an example to be followed?"

I'd say the answer to this is the former. Scotland seems to have become the example to followed by Westminster, The Senedd and every other political party. 🤬

Reform will be very unlike the current Labour Government in that they will find it difficult to do anything as their own MPs won’t vote for it. However one good thing that might come out of it is it might expose just how partisan the civil service now is and get change there, if only by left wing civil servants flouncing. I saw a tweet from civil servants threatening to do just that - they have no place in the civil service even now.

Yes this. There is this idea going round that governing a state is easy and if we just get rid of the wokesters / cut the crap / spend less money on waste / etc all problems will melt away and happiness will reign supreme.

Back in the 2000s a bunch of BNP got elected to council in Stoke. They turned up to the first meeting in a black Cadillac. They missed the second one - when the annual budget was set - and then complained that the decision had been made without them. I'm not suggesting Reform are quite that bad but the point is that if people elect politicians who are ignorant or who don't give a shit about how governance works, or are corrupt, or aren't serious, or are ideologues are who are just a bit thick then things won't go well. The UK has, for the last two centuries, avoided having such people near power (with a few exceptions) except in the last ten years when there's been a right parade of them.

This isn't restricted to the right, btw. When some politician on the left says they'll 'end tax evasion' and 'make the rich pay' I think 'OK - how.'

And when some politician on the right says they'll 'stop the boats', again, it's 'OK - how.' Politics is difficult and messy, and often objectives can only partially met, at best. But there's always a fresh cohort of fools who think it's easy to solve the world's problems.

Wings Over Scotland have a good take politics, the end being -

"So be careful who you vote for, readers, and try to have a better reason than that they’re “your” team. They’re not, and it isn’t a game."

Wings Over Scotland | Governing For Beginners

We have had some rubbish governments over the years but I think the SNP government in Holyrood and the current Labour government are up there. They are both determinedly breaking the law (on single sex spaces), they have sufficient guaranteed votes to avoid parliament on most things, their ministers seem to be unaccountable, they are both driven by ideologues, they both want to censure free speech, they both are supported by increasingly partisan police services and very partisan civil servants, they both seem very free to tax us.

The biggest issue to the lack of accountability.

There's nonsense on both sides though I find the right / Trump stuff much scarier.

But here's a counter-example. I live in NZ. The Green Party - as in the UK is now more of a 'progressive' than an environmentalist party.

They have had some trouble with their 15 MPs since the last election. One, Golriz Gahraman, was convicted for shoplifting. She was a former refugee from Iran and being a member of a minority that's why the Greens had her in Parliament. Gahraman blamed her crimes on historical trauma and the pressure of being a female member of a minority group in politics. She was ejected from Parliament.

Another, Darleen Tana, turned out to have been involved in illegally employing migrant workers and refusing to pay them. There was no real doubt about it but nevertheless she straight out claimed that her accusers were racists (she was also from a minority group). She was also ejected from Parliament.

One of the replacements was Benjamin Doyle.. He identified as takatapui, which would have originally had its own Maori meaning but has been co-opted into being a direct translation of 'queer', non-binary and having a disability (ie a bundle of minorities). Shortly after he entered Parlia a number of ill-judged social media posts he'd made came to light. They attracted the attention of of another politician who raised such a hue and cry that Doyle received death threats and he resigned from Parliament. Doyle's final speech slammed Parliament for being a colonialist institution, ie, one with no right to exist.

So among the Greens, who think they're the good guys, Gahraman was a thief and Tana was a fraud. Gahraman might genuinely have believed that past trauma made her do it. Tana, I think, was probably entirely cynical but who can know. The Greens' philosophy makes it harder to prevent this behaviour because one's background can excuse it and because they think they're the good guys, which makes them naive like Doyle.

Doyle was actually the one that annoyed me the most. Pro-Trumpers see no issue in ignoring the law / Parliament / whatever. But saying that the law or Parliament should be ignored because <insert intersectional reason> is absolutely no better yet that's where his logic leads. I can well understand why he'd say it out of anger but a politician should know better.

The Greens' fiscal policy is to introduce a hefty wealth tax on the rich and reduce income tax on everyone else. But the probable result of that would be capital flight, a reduced income tax take, meaning either a bankrupt state or reduced welfare provision. Their ideology is more important than assisting the needy

I guess my point in this long post is this: governing is serious, it's hard work and only the very best do it well. People like Reform and the Greens (described above) are fundamentally not serious, leastways in the way I think is needed, as they don't focus on what matters. Both of them are bulls in the china shop, just in different ways.

The difference there is those Green MPs were ejected/left Parliament. There was some accountability.

But here's a counter-example. I live in NZ. The Green Party - as in the UK is now more of a 'progressive' than an environmentalist party.

This is also true for the UK and particularly Scotland. Also to some extent, Germany.

I can't think of anywhere where the Greens are an environmentalist Party rather than a "Progressive" (the antonym annoys whenever I have to use it) hollowing out of the brand. I think it was in British Columbia that the Greens wound up voting in favour of tar sands extraction a few years ago, FGS.