“battle lines”
I don’t really see this thread full of people on either side claiming hes innocent or guilty. Personally, just now, I find the whole thing really sad.

Hes a divisive politician, in legal trouble. Its gonna get comments, but the truth of the allegations isn’t the meat of this thread (as I see it). Its peoples reaction to the situation (plot! crowdfund!) reaction to the accusations (do we believe complainants or just make sure they get a fair hearing or assume political interference and shennanigans) thats whats interesting.

Personally, I don’t like Salmond and the SNP (if anyone was wondering), but its definitely sadness and what the complainants are about to go through thats on my mind at the moment.

Guardian link.. Alex Salmond charged with sexual assault and attempted rape

Personally I’m waiting for the crowdfund klaxon.

nobeer, you seem to be under the impression that rudeness and gammon exist on only one side in Scotland.

Should’a gone to specsavers

nobeer,
The “paedos and perverts in westminster” DID get investigated at massive expense and with many lurid headlines. It cost a lot of money went on for a long time, tarnished the reputations and memories of a lot of innocent people and turned out to be based on the lies of one man. linky

The people bringing up both subjects (Alex and operation Midland) in the same sentence do tend to be loons though.

rich_s
I don’t like her politics (muh independence), her priorities (muh independence) and the way shes only ever obliquely straightforward about the nature of Scotlands finances (and avoids defending her own GERS figures from attacks by her own supporters) (see: muh independence).

But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to wanting sexual harassment dealt with properly. Shes certainly displayed a better attitude than scottish indy twitter where the “MI5 plot” mongers are out in force.

Even disliking her politics I’d like to think that shes wasn’t stupid enough to get dragged into this (as a woman in politics who genuinely seems to give a damn about the complainants) but she has had a lot of un-minuted* meetings with him which are already making some waves.

*Not keeping notes to avoid FOI requests and public scrutiny is a long term SNP habit that was always going to bite back. I confess I’ll be having schadenfreude to the max if this is the event that highlights it enough to attract the attention it deserves.

Not much else to be said now its all sub judice.
Scottish Twitter is lit tho’ 🙂

Guardian linky

Northwind,
Late reply here but your comment about Jezza;

He sat with Sinn Fein/IRA to work towards peace- as did Thatcher, and Clinton, and Major.

Can’t stand.
Among many other things, he invited some IRA people to Parliament a few weeks after the Brighton bomb went off.
If you think that makes him some sort of 12 dimensional political genius (as some seem to think from his farcical handling of brexit), then theres a bridge I’d like to sell you.

He doesn’t “work for peace”.
The best you could say is that his glad-handing of murderous left wing arseholes may provide balance to the tories glad-handing murderous right wing arseholes, but you can’t really develop a peace process when you only want one side to prevail.

For the benefit of .. just rone I guess .. all quiet on the brexshit carousel?
Here is some reading;
“Here are 180 factual, fully-sourced examples of the impact Brexit is already having on the UK. Jobs going, investment drying up, companies moving assets to the EU, or redomiciling. All happening as Government burns through £billions chasing a no deal Brexit it doesn’t have to”

From Edwin Hayward on Twitter.

We can laugh at their incompetence, inconsistency & lies. Its better than taking them seriously and listening to them like adults with justifiable sensible opinions. People recommending “no deal” should be in residential care not in TV studios with presenters nodding along encouragingly.

Tapes of brexiters saying “only an idiot would leave the single market” should be shown every time they pop up to justify setting fire to our collective trousers and running way.

We’re surrounded by lying clowns and we’re still taking them seriously through habit.

Laughter is the best disinfectant*

*I can think of**.
**That doesn’t involve public execution.

Satire may be dead, but we’re even lacking in jokes.
I’ve been watching the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on youtube. At least the ‘merkins have something to help them laugh at dumpster fire while it consumes them.

Also, on a more serious note, they also have a judicial system that remains somewhat independent of political power and is prepared to investigate foreign influence and money.

I think I should withdraw from commenting for now, because I’m properly angry.

Brexit was a shit position, but at least it was a position.

Now it seems that all of the top brextards have not only served us a shit souffle “by accident” (if the reports yesterday about Cameron are to be believed), but day by day its becoming obvious that none of them actually believed in what they were shovelling.

Its exhausting.

Brexiters who took a big bite of the mystery souffle and swallowed it down should probably be angrier than the average remainer by now.

rone,
Weird coincidence that hes moving things now eh?
If its “nothingtodowithbrexit” then why not wait a few months, and at least show support for his previous position?

Its almost like something big is going to happen that will be detrimental to his billions.

Exploiter or moron? Evidence is pointing only one way (one way for him, another for you).

dannyh

There are only two types of people who now believe in Brexit.

1. Exploiters who stand to gain personally (monetarily or politically or both).

2. Morons.

There are no exceptions to this now.

This. Squared.

Also surprised at the number of anti brexit posts in the heil, but the dark side is strong in many of them.
“its because he fears that brexit will be stopped!”
“its because of how hes been treated by the elites in the UK.”

Priceless that they get to vote.
Scary that they might get on a jury someday.

trail _rat
Online diatribe from people who read the original published sources > online diatribe from people who read the headlines and make stuff up based on anecdotes.

I have an elderly relative with diabetes who has fallen for sweetener quackery to the point where she thinks that regular coke helps her “control her sugar”, and sweeteners are poison.

Its dangerous unscientific nonsense.

Easiest way to get additional caffeine into your breakfast!

trail_rat

im with you . nut job. the diet sodas thing seems to be the only sense on his whole site

The fact that a massive quack agrees with you about one thing shouldn’t reassure you about the truth, it should make you look further.
a skeptical blog on mr cokequack.
The Scibabe on diet coke quackery.

keepass gives you the option of storing/backing up the file anywhere you like rather than looking after it for you.

Its more hassle, but not having a central store to be broken into is a good thing. Even if someone cracks keepass, they’d need access to my password file before it mattered to me.

Real men don’t get upset about adverts. (Except when they banned the orangutang one at christmas, the monsters).

Having said that 🙂 There are 2 versions of the ad on youtube.
The 31 second version had me thinking “Damn right!”
The 1:49 version had me thinking “eff off!”

Theres something about the longer one (tone?) that makes react negatively to an ad that is putting forward a view I completely agree with.

On balance, thats probably not a good ad.

richmars,
Google says it might have been Winston linky .

Either way the the principle applies, don’t give up.

I like them a lot, don’t pay full price as they seem to have “3 years for the price of one” offers pretty regularly (which often get mentioned via boingboing)

Very easy to use compared to rolling your own (Their mobile program is basically a nice easy interface for openvpn). Windows use is easy to set up and can be made automatic for non techy family members.

If one server gets blocked for some reason, just try another (and they have lots, all over the place).

Occasionally when using a server from the UK list, my youtube adverts will change to german or dutch, but thats the only negative comment I’ve got 🙂

Based in (I think) Peru? or somewhere else legally insulated from UK snooping. Which may be more important when UK Gov realises the the porn age ban thing is totally ineffective and outlaws vpns “for the children, you monster!”
(Disclaimer: I am not an international man of mystery hiding from the law. YMMV.)

But I said fe* not fu*?
Ah well

sobriety, I’d go further back than purgatory, why die in the first place :O)

I like to think that we’ll all look back on this decade someday as a timely but ultimately safe reminder that politics is important, nationalism is stupid, and that sitting back leaving it all to those people who developed strong opinions at uni and never rethought anything might be a mistake.

Who knows.

PS Personally I’m not completely without hope (despite a lack of political leadership) that we can end Brexit.

I’ve had enough constitutional chicanery and political backwardness in my life overall (grew up in NI through the troubles plus the years up to 2014 in scotland now this).

But as Churchill (I think) said; When walking through hell. Keep walking.

I second that Cougar. “Get in the ****’ sack” :o)

Don’t fall for the “SNP better” dialog. To pick two subjects; They have the power and the money to actually help the WASPI women and say bye bye to the the so called “rape clause” in Scotland. But they don’t because they’d rather moan and cry about it in “westmonster” than put their money where their alleged values are.

Even their rhetoric in Europe is a giggle when you compare it to directly comparable statements on the UK “single market”

They also threatened to use EU citizens as a bargaining chip if the EU didn’t let them back in if they won the independence vote (which was a vote to LEAVE Europe as well as the UK).

In essence they avoid scrutiny by speaking out loudly about things that westminister is doing to scotland, while studiously avoiding putting any of those things right in Scotland. (After all if things were better some people might decide that independence isn’t necessary”).

Education is definitely worse, and health arguably so.

It genuinely saddens me to rob people of the hope, but their faith is misplaced.

Even on the recent issue of the treatment of MPs by protesters, have a google and comparison about Jim Murphys treatment during the independence referendum, and then look for the condemnation from the SNP.

As a freudian example of the difficulty of holding contradictory positions in your head all the time, here are a few tweets from Nichola recently.
The first was deleted and replaced with the second.
From Twitter.

edited for clarity

GrahamS
Yup heard that one. Also the chuckle brother who think that water is an element and therefore not made up from hydrogen and oxygen.

Mostly listen to the debunkers tho .. saves giving them views and usually much shorter and more interesting.

Graham S
How many metres in a kilometer .. I’d forgotten that one!
Pretty direct quote from a flerfer who just had conversion from metres to kilometres explained:
“How can you divide a meter by a thousand and get something bigger*!!!!????!!!!”

Good times :O)

For those who get a kick out of the foolishness of others..
There are people on Youtube who:
Think that clouds passing overhead are other worlds passing closeby and have convinced themselves (possibly just himself) that he can see cities etc by looking up.
Think that all the pictures of Mars show a disaster zone with rubble from a civilisation.
Think that the phases of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth.

Personally I’m torn between frustration, sympathy and laughter, but the one thing I can’t get past is their certainty.

The first rule of Dunning-Kruger club is; you don’t know you’re in Dunning-Kruger club.

Its a faith position, not a scientific one.
They talk about evidence, but when people (e.g. wolfi6020 on youtube) challenged them to go out and look at the sun rising directly east and setting directly west on the equinox (an easy thing for anyone to measure which would never occur on a flat earth) zero flerfers actually did the experiment.

Faith positions are difficult to shake. When I was religious I knew there was a host of phenomena and moral questions that were difficult to explain or justify in a universe with a good god. But I always assumed that there were brilliant answers out there that I just hadn’t heard yet.

Then I looked for myself 🙂

Another explanation is honestly rank ignorance and stupidity. I’ve heard someone opine on the “failures of the globe earth model” and the fact that “gravity doesn’t exist” in one breath and then be unable to tell someone what the angles are in a triangle with three equal sides in the next.

We’re probably not losing the cure for cancer here.

Bear in mind that SG have not accepted that the process is unfair, only that it was not followed correctly in this case.

Thats a long way from what Salmonds crowdfunded accusations of an unfair and unlawful process.

Anyway, now that his distraction tactics are spent maybe we can wait for the outcome of the actual investigation.

Mr Salmond’s case focused entirely on the fairness of the government’s procedures and will have no bearing on a separate police inquiry into the allegations, which is still ongoing.

It was a page ago that people were talking about the IEA and TPA .. For those who want to know more I recommend this link article in the indy.

They don’t just share donor anonymity, right wing views and a lot of time on the BBC. They also share addresses in London.

The need for “balance” in news has led us down some weird paths. Dyson and Weatherspoons versus the rest of UK business in the Brexit coverage. Nigel Lawson versus global climate science in environment section. Now we have IEA and TPA (and others) given free reign to lead us down an economic path that might destroy the fabric of the whole country.

Who needs russians with facebook accounts when you have the BBC?

Have a look at Captain Disillusion on youtube .. He hasn’t dealt with this specific one (as far as I know), but he’ll educate you on what to look out for in terms of camera movement/lack of movement and whats practical/possible using CGI.

Personally I’m a sucker for a good magic trick but using camera trickery goes too far. The absence of physical effects and skill means it’s the opposite of what makes magic ‘magic’.

For the Corbynites here who think he’s playing 12 dimensional chess. Heres a tweet with some info on how much effect various outcomes would have on Labours chances.

Luke Akehurst on Twitter

For those who don’t want to click through,

Net change in likelihood to vote labour

Labour replace Corbyn as leader +14%
Labour move closer to the ‘centre’ or ‘centre ground of politics in the UK 0%
Labour back a referendum on the final brexit deal -2%
Labout back a hard brexit -10%
Labout back a soft Brexit -13%
Labour move further to the ‘left’ of politics in the UK than they currently are -22%

There you go Corbynites. If you want electoral success. You know what to do.

Despite the arguments above, no-one really knows what Corbyn thinks. Theres no real evidence on either side to show his genuine views on the most important political changes and challenges of this century.

Thats why hes a skin tag on the arse of politics, and a brake on any real opposition to the government.

Saw this on twitter as well..
Apparently the police are institutionally uninterested (even when people have cctv).

The best suggestion for “glitter alternative” on there was photocopier toner (possibly colour) :O)

Also no-ones mentioned the fart spray feature to ensure they chuck it away and he gets it back.

I reckon if you didn’t need the gps and video you could make something much simpler which would just get revenge without recording it. You wouldn’t get evidence, just a warm feeling inside.

Getting offended by others opinions or actions when they can have no material effect on your own life is a hangover of the worst aspects of humanity. Its the root of racism and homophobia. Given its head (as for example in ‘modern’ Pakistan) it can be weaponised to the point where people are in fear of their lives for holding views at variance with the majority.

Its also an impulse of which some people are weirdly unashamed, to the point where they’ll go on a public forum and boast about their mental sensitivity.

People eh :O)

“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so **** what.”

Stephen Fry

Yup, also no thermal camera footage of night hunting.

Not second guessing their skills and dedication though, maybe they just weren’t allowed in the park at night because thats when the tigers come out and eat you 🙂

tj I notice that you are prepared to accept comparable quotes from only:
“independence minded scots politicians” OR
“little Englanders who want to leave the EU”

Not altogether comparable groups.

If you expand the quotable group in Scotland to “Little Scotlanders who want to leave the UK (and EU)” for fairness we might have more chance of answering your request?

tj, not to get distracted from the matter at hand, you (and a lot of the independence movement) need to take a step back and “see yourself as others see you”.
Telling people they’ve “been telt” is not an argument (even if you shout it).

Saying that all the fascists are on the unionist side is a bit rich when a Siol nan Gaidheal banner led some of the recent pro independence demonstrations.

you can hardly admit that in the world of politics can you

Well .. actually. You can. It could almost be called a duty, but not by these self serving numpties.

I grew up in the whacky world of Northern Ireland politics, but even the sinn fein election posters at the height of the troubles (“Freedom Justice Peace”) caused me less sympathetic cognitive dissonance than listening to may, corbyn & co. these days.

They aren’t just pushing political differences they are denying reality.

As an aside, Scottish independence supporters pointing out the stupidity of leaving the EU and abhorring the use of EU citizens as political pawns gives me the same feeling.
( That I’ve gone down the wrong leg in the trousers of time and things just don’t seem to make sense 🙂

Also this link here.

We’re still negotiating and arguing with each other and taking no account of the fact that the EU holds all the cards and has no intention of breaking any of its red lines.

If only there was a way to get on their side of the table and forget all this nonsense?

I could really do with being overridden by a few “Unelected bureaucrats” right now, rather than listening to these unicorn mongers.

People (particularly those who think that Corbyn/Labour could step in and renegotiate) could benefit from reading this summary of how things stand with and in the EU.