Noam Chomsky tells an Edinburgh Book Festival audience that Vladimir Putin should be given the benefit of the doubt on his motives for invading Ukraine, and that he (Chomsky) supports Scottish independence. The audience, which must be overwhelmingly idiots, whoops and cheers.
Sam Taylor
25.3K posts
Runs @These_Islands. “cannot stand the awesome reality of Scotland’s energy wealth” - Alex Salmond. Tweeting in a personal capacity.
- £5 more than in England, purely for the bragging rights. Transparently ridiculous politics.BREAKING: Thousands of Scottish pensioners to receive up to £305 in winter heating support. news.stv.tv/politics/thous…
- Terrific performance from Brian Cox last night on #bbcdn. Utterly convincing as man who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
00:00 - Nicola Sturgeon looks annoyed when asked about the appropriateness of taking an MSP salary while devoting most of her time to writing a book. In the two and a half years since she stepped down as FM, Sturgeon has made 7 spoken contributions in parliament on matters of substance.
00:00 - “So… what? We’re just meant to accept that a big kid did it and ran away?” Pointed questions from @GlennBBC and embarrassing evasions from @_KateForbes.
00:00 - Ian Blackford delivers the best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe, by telling his “in conversation” audience that there are no economic downsides to Scottish independence.
- Disappointing that no interviewer has yet asked Sturgeon about her decision to continue drawing her MSP salary, while making virtually no contributions at Holyrood but finding plenty of time to write her memoirs.
- Lorna Slater today fled the chamber to avoid listening to Liam Kerr’s point of order, which cited irrefutable evidence that either Slater has misled the Scottish Parliament, or Michael Matheson has misled Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee. (Video part 1/3)
00:00 - Interestingly, many people (correctly) pointing out that Yes Scotland and the SNP had to be legally completely independent, to comply with Electoral Commission rules. @Ross_Greer might regret revealing the CEO of the SNP organised a pay rise for him at Yes Scotland…“Peter Murrell gave me a pay rise. That’s why he’s a hero.”
- Roughly half of the civil servants employed by the Scottish Government in its core directorates are “managers” or “team leaders”. And half of them only manage one or two people. What a farcical situation.
00:00 - Patrick Harvie refuses to accept that the Cass Report is a valid piece of scientific research.
00:00 - Curious that the compensation decision seems to have reached WASPI campaigners despite no letters having been sent.
- 1/ Extraordinary. John Swinney appears genuinely unaware the SNP broke a 2021 manifesto commitment to freeze income tax rates. All the more remarkable as he was personally responsible for one of the increases, when he was acting Finance Secretary in 2022.
00:00 - 1/ Yesterday, @HumzaYousaf said that high energy bills in Scotland are “entirely linked to the fact that we are not independent”. This is straightforwardly false. A short thread…
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