Remember when Jeremy Clarkson punched a BBC producer in the face because he couldn’t get steak for his dinner?
Well, now it appears that he is sick of hearing about the inadequacy of the English meals provided for kids whose parents are would normally qualify for free school meals.
<Clarkson said that a woman requesting to be given supermarket vouchers instead of the food boxes was “presumably [doing it] so that she could exchange it at the supermarket for fags and scratch cards”>.
Or maybe, Mr Clarkson, given that the government, that is the taxpayer, is paying a private company £30 per child for these packages, which are supposed to last for 10 days, they would actually like £30 worth of food, the woman just th0ught the kids should get a bit more out of it.
I mean, half a tomato and half a pepper and a tiny piece of carrot… Is this global Britain leading the world? I know we should all be fighting obesity, but starving people to death is probably at the extreme end of the solutions available.
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Two US National Guards have been pulled from Inauguration duty tomorrow, because of links to the Far Right…
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Why is this not a scandal? Why are people not calling for Johnson to go? Why are the Scottish Tories whining about what a terrible job Nicola Sturgeon is doing, while their own English government is making such a pig’s ear of this pandemic?
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Douglas Ross MP
If it means stopping the SNP and their push for indyref2, I would be part of a unionist coalition. The last Scottish Labour leader wouldn’t work with us. Will you @AnasSarwar @MonicaLennon7?
That’s very flattering Douglas but it’s a red card from me. See you on the campaign trail where we’ll be fighting for radical social and economic change, not a political agenda that looks after the wealthy few.
Oh, dear, Dougie no mates. Richard Leonard wouldn’t touch you with a tarry pole and now candidate, Monica Lennon takes the same view.
I wonder what millionaire, Anas Sarwar will have to say to that.
After this, I suspect that even his answer will be a polite but firm Nah!
UPDATE
Nah, Dougie, mate. It wasn’t working with unionists. It was working with Tories. There’s a difference.
Both candidates know that your party is toxic. The UK election after they joined with you in UKOK and Better Together, they lost 97% of their seats. They’ve never recovered. And if that’s not enough, look at what happened to the Liberal Democrats after their coalition with your party in London. I suppose you could try Willie Rennie, although as 5th largest party out of five, I’m not sure that even if he agreed, it would do you much good. Especially as his English boss just ruled out re-joining the EU.
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
“Hand in Gove”.
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Nah, I think it’s the one on the right that’s the puppet, Conan.
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Quite possibly 🙂
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Hinge and Bracket
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🙂
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Watched another no information interview by a churchillian masterminds team, the Northern Ireland Gove nor general. How to not answer a simple question.
I hope that rabb’s invitation to Navalny isn’t going to use the same accommodation as Assage is using.
Not a hint of self inspection, don’t know the inside story of the Putin affair but rabb accusing the Russians of foul play without looking at what is going on with the flounder.
Deaths today, 1610, not much of a problem says the flounder.
Fishing;; teething troubles.
It’s their own problem not getting prepared for exporting.
Flooding in Cambridgeshire, just a bit of rain.
I’ll be certain of our media when they start asking the questions, again and again, when the cabinet divert to their briefing notes and not answer the actual question asked.
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Yes… these businesses really should have been on the ball a bit more. After all, they had hours after the deal was done to get all the paperwork sorted.
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I like the way that the government think they can get away with ‘we told you things would be different’ for years, without specifying how so. Certainly not helped by themselves not knowing what they wanted.
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(Caption)
Ross Thomson’s right-hand man
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Randomly OT, here’s Randy Rainbow’s latest blockbuster song parody (via facebook, hope that’s not a problem for too many Munguinites): https://www.facebook.com/RandyRainbowOfficial/videos/233792524916636.
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LOL. Hilarious, Ed.
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Clever stuff!
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I’m really not interested in what Jeremy Klaxon has to say about school meals.
Here, however, is a little background on Compass Group.
This isn’t a one-off…they have previous.
Of course, as you might expect, there are links and donations to the Conservative Party and links to other companies which have also been picking up lucrative contracts.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/14/1-5-billion-profits-hefty-government-contracts-and-big-political-donations-the-firm-behind-the-free-school-meals-scandal
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Oliver Twist.
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First rate, Jake.
I think that once again Marcus has persuaded the blond scarecrow that this is not on.
I only included Old Jeremy, who is David Cameron’s neighbour, because I wondered if people might think that instead of complaining about their kids being pretty much starved, they might want to just get hold of DePfeffel and give him a hard rap in the jaw… I mean it’s obviously what posh people do when they don’t get the food they want. Perhaps it’s time we emulated our betters a bit more.
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Philippa Whiteford makes the point that the so-called confidentiality breach by the Scottish Government Health minister was already in the public domain and had been released by the UK Government :
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It is unbelievable how stupid the Scottish branch actually is.
Seriously, do they realise they are dealing with people who actually know what they are talking about?
Time after time they tweet without checking any facts at all.
Of course in a lot of cases the people they are aiming at accept without question, but it happens so often now that it’s becoming farcical.
If I were them, I’d be asking it there wasn’t a more appropriate position for Mark McInnes in the organisation.
Maybe washing the cups or something.
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They’re not stupid or ignorant. They do it deliberately. They’ve learned from Trump that first impressions count. Use anything that passes till found out, and even then most of the faithful will not notice when the facts are revealed. They remember what they read the first time round, like so many Republicans still convinced the election was rigged. Lies are now the crypto-currency of politics – with no shortage of new buyers for the scam.
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Yes. Of course the Tories are as thick as shit (Ross, Duguid, Bowie, Wells, Greene, Golden et Al) but that doesn’t stop them following the Goebbels-Bannon Method of lying and accusing your opponents of doing what you’re doing.
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The technique is known as the firehose of disinformation: untruths piling up so thick and fast that they can’t possibly all be checked.
If you can’t turn it off at the spigot – which facebook and Twitter have effectively done to Trump – the only cure is to be very selective in what media products you consume.
Old Soviet joke – oh, perhaps the young’uns won’t know what samizdat is. Samizdat – “self – publishing” – was the system whereby banned and anti-State literature would get around in Soviet Russia. It was a bit like a pyramid scheme, or maybe sharing digital files by torrenting. The idea was that your dissident would scribble her magnum opus on the backs of fag packets and losing lotto tickets and get them to someone with a typewriter, who would type it up on an old manual typewriter (only kind available, usually) and at the same time produce stencils which could be mimeographed (even after photocopiers became available in the old Soviet Union, they were high-value assets and we locked away in rooms with restricted access and a reliable Party member making a note of who photocopied what).
So you’ve got loads of people who spend their evenings and weekends typing up Subversive Literature and cranking out copies on their mimeographs (if they had access to them), and other people receiving them and retyping them and putting their copies out into circulation too. (Don’t ask me about version control. Just don’t.)
Anyway, back to the old Soviet joke: a certain gentleman approaches a typist who puts out Samizdat and asks her (yes, I know, but it would most likely have been a her, even in the old Soviet Union) is she’s up for a big job, she agrees, and asks what it is, and your gentleman hands her a copy of War and Peace. “But”, she splutters in astonishment, “that’s a classic! You can get it for under a rouble at the Dom Knig (State bookstore), in nice hard covers!”
“Ah well, you see” (says the certain gentleman), “it’s for my daughter, and she won’t believe a thing she reads unless it’s samizdat”.
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LOL.
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True, John, but they have to try to persuade other people. The faithful may have to be reminded to vote, but it’s the people who are still thinking that have to be persuaded.
I think that all they do is persuade the undecided that whatever they want, it’s not a set of incompetent liars.
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Hah! Evidently, our First Minister is far too gullible, bless her: she should know by now never to trust a word that comes out of that lying, incompetent regime!
Gawd… and these are the people we’re going to have to negotiate with to finalize independence? When they don’t know their haemorrhoids from the tennis elbows?
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Caption: Fancy a snort?
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LOL: Don’t mind if I do Mr Gove, sir.
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Caption:
Q. You got some blow down there, Mike?
A. What did you just say?
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LOL
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(caption)
Oh no! Who telt the freaks there wiz a party. They’re at the door.
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HIde the stuff… they’ll get it all up their noses…
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Hah! Never mind the death toll, feel the PR optics…
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That’s clearly what it’s all about.
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Caption:
In a touching tribute to The White Powder Club comedy duo Dougie and Mike prepare to sing “Charlie is my darling” at a gala dinner hosted by the Royal Deeside Pan Pipe Appreciation Society.
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LOL. Brilliant.
Here, maybe Moira will join them…
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Caption
Oh Good (sarcasm); the Bad and the Ugly have arrived.
Look it’s Dumb and Dumber
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O/t more results from Scot Goes Pop. SHOCK
55% back May’s Holyrood election as a plebiscite for indy!
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Well well well who’d a thunk it, PP?
Well, Cassandra did, obviously, and I’ve said so in various comments addressed to the readerships of many of the pro-independence newspaper[Give it up, you useless article. We all know there’s only one.-Ed.]s.
It’s been in my mind that we – i.e., the independence movement, SNP, Holyrood, Scottish Government – may need to put on a burst of speed in case the regime moves to foreclose our options by shutting down / neutering the parliament, starving the SG of cash – the legislation is in place, is it not, for Westminster to take over in areas that were supposedly devolved, after all. “Give up this silly, silly idea of holding another referendum or we’ll cut you off at the knees financially, and no, you’re having a laugh, we’re not going to let you borrow any money either” – that would do it, right?
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Anything is possible, Ed.
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Well I’m with you Ed, no more of this section 3o mince. And no more just one more mandate and they will relent. As George Osbourne’s epistle yesterday stated, they are NEVER going to agree to another referendum and even if they do they’ll just add unsurmountable conditions to it.
Too many high heid yins in SNP seem to be content with devolution or else they are crippled by caution. Well, I fear a return to effective direct rule so they’d better not get the bums too cosy on those seats. Holyrood will be the parish council Blair always intended it to be.
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I suspect that what I’m about to say will already be obvious to Munguinites, sort of it-goes-without-saying, but I’m going to say it anyway.
The way I see it, PP, given that the legislative programme which the First Minister announced includes referendum legislation to be put to the parliament during THIS session, is that first we have to see what the outcome of the Keating case is. That’s the next fork in our decision tree.
I maintain that the Keating case was a strategic error. I suspect that the Scottish Government / SNP leadership would have preferred to leave the matter unresolved, which would have put the ball firmly in the Westminster regime’s court: it would be up to them whether to refuse a §30 order / take the SG to court / overrule Holyrood to try to prevent a referendum (of whatever kind) happening. If the Court of Session adjudges that a §30 order is required for a referendum to proceed, and that the Westminster regime is within its rights to refuse one, that blocks off the constitutional approach if Westminster refuses – yet again – to grant the order.
Osborne’s brainf*art about “just say no” (in The National today – this will take you to the article: https://archive.vn/bJne7) is, I note, predicated on the automatic, unthinking (and probably unconscious) assumption that Westminster’s sovereignty is infinite and may not be abridged in any way – a delusion common to English Establishment and parliamentarian types, and one that is, it goes without saying (see what I did there) is truly foreign to the way we Scots – indeed, all sane people in sane societies – see things.
Back to the decision tree. The form of the referendum would have to be predicated on the result of the Keating case. Osborne is, unsurprisingly, quite evidently unaware of the Keating case – and if he’s not, then it’s even more highhandedly evident that he assumes Westminster can overrule some silly wee pretendy Scottish court if it has the sheer unmitigated gall to strike down what its feudal superiors and imperial masters have decided.
Depending on how the Keating case plays out, we may find that the constitutional approach can be stymied by a Westminster regime’s refusal to “allow” us to have a referendum. In that case, a plebiscite becomes not so much an option as a necessity – though if I were the First Minister, I would rule out Plan B until Westminster played into my hands until it gave me no choice but to invoke it – and I’d keep my powder well dry, play my cards close to my chest and not tip my hand until Westminster had well and truly painted itself into a corner.
It goes without saying (see, I did it again) that former colonies have rarely won their independence without a fight – and without breaking some laws imposed by the colonial Power. There were some exceptions in the post-WWII movement toward general decolonization in pursuance of the aims and purposes of the United Nations, but those same colonial powers today have lost sight of the high-minded, principled ideals of that time and reverted to type. England – as embodied in the Westminster parliament – as always fails to see its periphery as much more than occasionally inconvenient possessions, and the Tories in particular have no compunction about treating us Jockanese as uneducated natives who’re simply too stupid, obstinate and stubborn to understand that the Tories are the natural party of government.
Anyway, Gideon George Osborne was a lousy Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now we can chalk up some more black marks against him. But enough already, I’m starting[Did you say “starting”?-Ed.] to waffle. They’re particularly nice with maple syrup or blueberries, though.
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They do seem to have some sort of notion of their devine rights, don’t they?
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Well, that is how they will see it then. It bodes well.
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🙂
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And thank Munguin so generously donating to the crowd fund that led to the polling! Some interesting results already – including
Westminster 55 SNP, 2 Tories, 1 LibDem and Ian Murray.
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Munguin says it was just some second hand gold that was lying about the place looking untidy, PP
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The rush to get out the vaccine seems to be the flounder Spaffing it against a wall.
Latest from Israel.
The effectiveness of the Astra vaccine is reported to be around 33% and needs to be second dosed in TWO weeks as tested.
Wonder when we will find out the experts were overruled by the Politics.
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It has to be said that the media has a vested interest in making the figures look as bad as possible, nothing like a bit of panic to sell papers / get clicks.
Also, people seem to think they can revert to normal behaviour (I don’t blame them for wanting to), but have basically no protection for a couple of weeks. This inevitably makes the numbers look bad.
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That is a huge risk… “I’ve had the vaccine; I can do what I want; I’m now invincible” attitude which will lead to a spiral again.
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At some point, people will have to come to that conclusion though, otherwise there’s no point in getting vaccinated. We’ve already seen scare stories about old folk in Norway dying after taking it, we don’t need any more ammunition for the anti-vaxxers.
Something’s got to give eventually, people are not going to accept never leaving their local area and never seeing their friends / families / other countries forever.
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No and I have no doubt that it will get better. but, for me at least, I shall for a long time, be cautious.
I’m not going to assume that the day after I have the vaccine life will go back to July 2019.
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Jeez…
That’s scary, if Israel’s right.
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Israel’s always right; ask Starmer.
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LOL. SIR Keir if you don’t mind. Know your place.
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It’s wearing my Phrygian cap on the Place de la Concorde.
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… and, I ask myself, why not?
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Asked my doctor if he gives me antibiotic course to be taken for a week, is it ok if I just take it over the next 7 weeks at one a week.
Answer:-NO
As Ed says
Misinformation is the media methods, thankfully I don’t purchase a daily paper anymore.
Evening standard reports on the internet that patel is attacking the flounder for not handling the pandemic well, who would have thought it.
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Does she know that he’s about to go and …. horror of horrors … does he see herself as prime minister?
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Witch Queen possibly.
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Certainly witch!…
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Just released
1801 daily deaths, maybe that’s why she broke ranks.
These are in the main englander deaths.
Can we see the media reaction.
The flounder promises ‘Eldorado’, wasn’t that a favourite fortified wine from the 70’s?
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He’s seems to still be attempting herd immunity despite it being shown not to work.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsLZckqXcAUQ3l7?format=jpg&name=large
Bye then.
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There doesn’t appear to be a large crowd of well-wishers to say goodbye. Is that the entire White House staff or just those that were left after the resignations?
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LOL. Poor unloved Trump.
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Well, we survived four years of having an orange idiot having the nuclear codes.
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Phew!
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Caption; The Gove plan, a duet to woo the Scots, “Charlie is ma darlin.”
Well perhaps, it could be a statement.
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OOPS, apologies to Jake. Just read through the comments, Jake covered the Peruvian marching powder and the Charlie song.
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LOL, indeed.
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