I am not actually watching because I am in bed but I am on TENTERHOOKS for Cape Verde, can you imagine what it would mean for them? Remembering the clip of folk going absolutely wild when St Lucia won their first ever medal at the Olympics, I love tiny countries having big moments!

Finished Final Fantasy Tactics the other night - very good, can see why it's a classic - and have immediately went onto Ōkami which was £8. Unlike FFT I actually played this at the time, but it's very Wind Waker-y in having a lovely art style that helps it visually outlive its original era

A joy I have never experienced in my life until now: the satisfaction of how smooth a new stick of lip balm is Relatedly (sorry! Sorry!) I am currently about 20% gecko, medicine, what wonderful stuff, "this will fix your skin right up, but unfortunately the process involves destroying it first"

Also sorry not to just totally call this poster out, but this is just exasperatingly outdated and stupid analysis. The thing with "ho ho, we're going to ~tactically~ position our party in such a manner" is that after about a generation it ceases being tactical, because your tactic has worked.

Sorry, not to big balls "I'm enough of a Scottish elections expert they even sometimes put me on the telly to talk about them": there is precisely zero indication that being, supposedly, big horrible intolerant meanies to pure, innocent Kate Forbes has actually done the SNP any harm.

"Excuse me, servant, did the Masters of the House not provide you with the correct walking route? We don't go that way 🙄"

This is not true on its own merits, but it's also untrue in that the likelihood in 2023 of a Scottish Catholic politician being anti-marriage equality was pretty low: in 2014, when it was introduced, 60% of Scottish Catholics were supportive. Absolutely no way that figure wasn't *higher* a decade on

I feel left out because despite my relentless Capital-P Posting, I am not on any remarkably funny lists. Must try harder.

Looking forward to seeing the transfers on this one, because RUK + CON + IND RT + SFP is 53.3% for the Right, so in theory a path was there for RUK or CON win, but didn't happen. Pre-election some had suggested I may have been wrong to have the SNP included in my three-way tossup call; vindication!

This morning in "never before heard phrases in the English language", I just thought the words "tell you what, Alex Salmond would have done a good turn as a panto dame"

The Scottish Green Party laughing all the way to becoming - I'm pretty sure! - the most (currently, i.e. at most recent election) successful Green Party at national level on the planet after shedding the Yorp contingent was not, I imagine, how the latter saw it going

The bizzare cognitive dissonance all these people have where Yousaf’s (alleged, with no evidence) muslim homophobia is dangerous but Forbes’s christian homophobia is dignified and worthy of respect.

Kate Forbes participated in a question and answer session on "the challenge of leading with integrity". Challenging indeed.

This is why Kate Forbes was unfit to be First Minister and why those who still go out to bad for her are fundamentally awful people. I, as a gay person, have absolutely every right, as do our allies, to decide that your views on *my fundamental humanity, rights and dignity* are of utmost revelance

Just reminding everyone that in Germany the Social Democrats, Greens and Left all co-ordinated their departure from Twitter, and at the very least the SNP and Greens plus Labour and Lib Dems could do similar as independent pairs, if not as a quartet

Forcing myself to do a longer cycle despite the wind for Good Health Reasons, but also intending not to bring a biscuit for my chill at the destination also for Good Health Reasons, and very glad 75 minutes ago Allan droppes the second intention and brought a Caramel Wafer, because fuckin WINDS

This is to a certain degree admitting what is widely understood anyway: Starmer was never meant to be Prime Minister and was destined for a Miliband style "sure we'll have him in Cabinet somewhere" position in ~2029 after leading Labour to "decent recovery but still a defeat" in 2024 and resigning

The simple fact is that Kate Forbes was out of touch with the country (the majority of which supports marriage equality), her party (tmowsme), her broader faith community (Christians as a whole, tmowsme, and did in 2014), and in my view actually most fatally of all, her generation (tmowsme)

Does staying in the Cabinet when it signs off a bill you intend to vote against, or not resigning simply because you happen to be on leave on the day of the vote, count as "compromising your values and beliefs for personal gain"?

Apart from anything else, it just really should not be acceptable in 2026 to say that other people have "compromise their values and beliefs for personal gain" just because you disagree with their interpretation of their faith and how it fits in the modern world

Often fondly remember the person who, when I was stacking dog food on the shelves in Somerfield, decided to pepper me with questions about whether I was concerned about the LHC making a black hole and destroying the world. Funnily enough my A in Higher Physics did not equip me for that exchange.

Hello Glasgow? I was promised no rain by noon, so I planned to hang out a washing, why are showers still expected? Do you want it to reek of smoke because my next door neighbour has a fire in the garden EVERY EVENING and I, of course, am unwilling to simply ask him not to do so if I have a wash out?

Aw fuck off can't Scotland have anything nice

Scots, preparing the "celebration bevvy" clip, to our southern friends:

I've always liked the Democratic Republic of the Congo, do you know what country I am always telling people how much I like, it is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, "fine lads, those boys from the Democratic Republic of the Congo", can't stop saying it

This is another thing that should have massive alarm bells ringing for Labour that makes them re-consider their enthusiastic participation in right wing culture wars - Greens are the most popular option for under 40's! Labour will simply die if that continues to be the case.

They're calling it the best loyalty scheme luck in the history of loyalty schemes (they just assigned you at random, you did not get to pick)

Just fundamentally unconvinced that "Manchesterism" is going to work in Scotland, not least because the "centre vs periphery" dynamic in Scotland is very different to England: the vast majority of Labour voters live in our political and economic centre, for one thing!

Inside me there are two wolves, one is absolutely seething that the lashing rain is back in Glasgow, the other is still exhausted from lack of sleep due to a week of warmth and is glad to have a guilt-free nap planned for after work rather than a cycle

So glad of all the SNP MPs to make a return via Holyrood, this danger wasn't one of them. As Jordan points out, Forbes was very specifically not there to talk to people she disagreed with. Also even if she was I am so sick of this fetishisation of debate and discussion with monsters.

Paraguay isn't even the best guay, very funny

Look my approach to Shabana Mahmood has consistently been "what the hell is she doing", but tonight is absolutely peak "what the hell is she doing"; obviously I think her policies are just evil in and of themselves, but what business does any department have announcing major policies mid-interregnum

Hello I had to get some of my thoughts about why Andy Burnham probably won't save the Scottish Labour Party out of my skull before bed, or else I wouldn't sleep because they'd be rattling around the aforementioned skull medium.com/p/1d709a1145...

Having a normal night

I don't think I've actually seen anything else Penelope Keith was in, but my mum is a fiend for "British sitcom Christmas Specials" so I have seen the Good Life episode a million times, and the absolute contempt with which "... this is the Daily Mirror" is delivered gets me every single time

Not to obsess over decentralisation but I think fundamentally the UK Government's approach to local government reform in England is paradoxically neither small nor big enough, when compared with pretty much any other country outside these (very bad at local government) islands.

Sorry I'm going to be UNBEARABLE on this topic during the Burnham Premiership, but there is a perfectly good word for "giving local government more powers" and that word is "decentralisation", we should not be using the same word for a process of ceding legislative powers as for management powers!

Also re; my most recent RTs, Rhun ap Iorwerth is quite literally an MS for Bangor Conwy Môn, so I can't imagine the people of Bangor feel enormously distant from the current Senedd and its governing party...

What's absolutely, stunningly fantastic about this patter is that any conceivable thing that could be "devolved" (STILL THE WRONG TERM IN THIS CONTEXT) to local government in Scotland is *actually* already devolved to Holyrood, so this requires effectively overruling the Scottish Parliament...

One of the oddities of Devolution (proper Devolution, not the English stuff that's just Local Government Reform) is that in Scotland it's easy to end up totally divorced from UK politics to the extent the only reason I am aware Kemi Badenoch still exists is the English folk I follow post about her

Obviously this is very Personal Anecdote but on "relative decline" I have only ever in my life visited one (1) major city but found that zero (0) of its flagship museums were open on that day, which made my few hours there a dull, miserable slog before my onward connection later on - Birmingham

Look this is not an actual comment on the Scottish Government overall but I do find it charming how John Swinney very clearly insists on hand-signing and dating letters, so anytime in a work capacity I see a letter from him it's had to be scanned back in by his officials rather than digitally signed

Just discovered that the Czech Foreign Minister belongs to the motorist rights party that's part of the government, that makes sense, if I was distributing major government offices between coalition partners, I'd definitely think "the weirdo car shaggers" for "managing international relations"

I am of course very sad we aren't going any further in the World Cup but also as a Not Football Person I am relieved I don't have to watch any more matches where we shite the bed within first 10 mins out of a sense of national obligation

Good morning I am once again throwing a little strop at climbing because stuff that claims to be graded at a level I am consistently capable of doing is lying and is definitely at least two grades up, the petulance, it's very petulant

Scottish Labour's last remaining support splits roughly evenly between true believers and tactical anti-Nat voters so idk man, maybe there needs to be something a whole lot better than "SNP voters: dumb as rocks and blinded by Independence" to prevent the party completely dying

Anakin-Padme meme, but it's for Supermarket own brand ice lollies like "we come in a pack of six, with three flavours" - "so, there's two of each flavour, right?" It's the worst possible imbalance: one of my fav, three of my least fav. Morrisons, this is why you are losing market share to Lidl

What an absolutely cursed map, hate it

Café para todos*, but make it typically British in its constitutional inefficiency and inconsistency * Sorry this is an extremely specific reference to, err, the process of establishing Spain's Autonomous Communities post-Franco, which created a nigh-on federal structure in a legally unitary state