David Aitken

Plain speaking, no bullshit politicians shouldn't be a refreshing change. It shows the decline in honesty and transparency amongst many of our so called political class in recent years.

Different system, but I think many progressive Scots voters will still have a takeaway from last night, with SNP1 Green2 now looking like the best option to defeat Reform. These two won't form an alliance, but Scots Greens would be sensible to promote this as a Scots anti Reform tactic.

Could it be that the right-wing influence being exerted internally at the BBC, smoothing the way for PM Farage, is keen to align our worries, talking points and cultural touch stones with those of the fascist regime across the pond, in the hope that we are able to ape them convincingly after the GE?

A practice that could usefully be applied across all the so called creative industries.

My first thought when I heard he'd been arrested. Give how dim he was during the Newsnight interview, god knows how much more he might implicate himself in an actual police interview. I bet the lawyer sitting by his side had a tricky time. Of course he may have no commented the whole way through

@vallescurarule.bsky.social speaks the truth about Lit Fic being just another genre (like SFF/H!) in our chat with @danielwillcocks.bsky.social of The Writer's Chair podcast before SPEC FIC FOR NEWBIES VOL 3 comes out from @lunapress.bsky.social on 24 March! #writing
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wcw...

Murderous ethnofascist dictatorships as host nation aside, as sporting spectacles, World Cups peaked for me at the end of the last century. As a Scot, being ambivalent about the fact of our qualification for the first time in 28 speaks volumes for the diminished state of the sport and its relevance.

Agnes Owens wrote between shifts, childcare, & exhaustion. Her serious writing career began later in life - not from lack of ambition, but from structural constraint. Her work challenges the myth that literary greatness requires institutional permission.

Clearly, but Swinney needs to think big about bringing new talents from abroad to boost our ageing and falling population, to make the new independent state function. He also needs to stand as the antithesis to WM ruin.

While we're clearly not going to take territory, Swinney's offering should be to invite those in rUk who have had enough of the rot to join us. Similarly, he should be reaching out to the dispossessed and marginalised in the States offering asylum from that fascist hellhole.

Guardian view on Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Britain does not need political lectures from a billionaire tax exile | Editorial Editorial: Comments on the ‘colonisation of the UK’ by the co-owner of Manchester United were erroneous, crass and a gif

In 2020, Jim Ratcliffe moved his fortune to Monaco, saving himself an estimated £4 billion in tax.

In the same year, immigrants in the UK contributed around £20 billion in tax.

That says it all.

You not think MON will get a 12 month extension? Could be a sensible move. Avoid another reset, and give them time to scope out the right long term replacement. Would be easier to persuade him to do so if Hearts end up winning the league, as he'd be keen to prove himself across a whole season.

Wild theory: given the whole cabinet have now come out to back Starmer, could he have colluded with Sarwar to call for his resignation to help rally support?

Body Pump classes are a good solution. Join a gym that does them. Strengthens your back, keeps you lean and stops muscle atrophy.

Best outcome for the SNP is for Starmer to cling on til May. A new PM could revive Labour somewhat. On the other hand, the more anger grows towards Starmer between now and May, the better Reform may do, as more unionists turn to Farage.

GenAI users are just another in the long line of people who want an easy path to creative success, so they target art, because they think the work of creation is unimportant in regards to the product

It’s the “I could do that” guy in the modern art museum

It’s why they choose the genres they do

Paddington and the Muppets would be a great crossover movie.

It seems very unlikely that these two would have spent time together in the front room of a 1990s suburban semi-detached villa.

Great piece from Mike on the crumbling shit show that is the country still currently known as the United Kingdom...

What we're seeing with different elements of civic society creeping around with Farage is very much what I call the 'shadow election' - the way in which elites try to anticipate an election and change of power, which in some ways they see as a rubber stamp on their own choices. (1/2)

New to Dunfermline High Street. This is Twice Told Tales, second-hand bookshop & cafe: “We have been absolutely blown away by the response we've had. Thank you so much to everyone who's visited and for all the encouraging comments. It has far exceeded our wildest expectations.”
Via Dunfermline Press

Labour will ensure all peers meet the high standards the public expect of them and we will introduce a new participation requirement as well as strengthening the circumstances in which disgrace members can be removed.

Blink and you'll miss it - another Labour manifesto promise broken.

And this mistake has led to the narrowing of sitcom. Every sitcom now has to be set in a recognisable fixed space. When the genius of the form is you can put your characters anywhere. Tudor England. Deep space. On the buses. Doesn’t matter. The recognition is the character dynamics, not the set.

His painful use of adverbs marks him out as a talentless hack.

Peter Cook on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War,” notwithstanding, fascists hate artists because empathy highlights their hatefulness & renders them ridiculous.

Last weeks Holyrood Sources podcast is worth a listen - it was a recording and analysis of a focus group in Falkirk. The de-toxification of Farage in Scotland discussion was both illuminating & troubling. We all know what he is, but for some folk that doesn't seem to matter too much.

Thoroughly recommend Alan's writing classes. I'm near completion of the first draft of a novel, with an idea born from a prompt in a thi wurd class. Subsequent extracts have since been critiqued by an array of talented readers and writers from this group.
#amwriting
#booksky
#writingcommunity

Indeed, but it's an easy narrative stick with which opponents can beat 'the branch office.' Until Scottish Labour can break away from London they are forever cursed to be in the shadow of, and duty bound to obey, their distant elitist masters. Electoral kryptonite.

Much though I have enjoyed all of my many trips to the USA over forty or so years I have realised that I cannot go there any more until there is what we might call ‘regime change’ Like Iran they are killing their own citizens. Tragic

Seems to be happening already. Does Burnham's rejection this morning now establish for Scottish voters that Labour is no longer a party of the left, in yet another Westminster based blow for Sarwar?