notthathunter.bsky.social
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(also there is a line in here about FSG-era Liverpool using sentimentality as part of the marketing, but, when it comes to personnel, extracting competitive advantage by being absolutely fucking ruthless at selling people when their time is perceived to be up)
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simultaneously I know that everyone in the football industry views these employment relationships as transactional (correctly)
but also, as an incurable fan, I feel like it breaks football kayfabe a little when we assume *everyone* should view them as transactional relationships
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BBC Scotland should broadcast the Edinburgh Eastern declaration with a sitcom-style laugh track
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reminds me that I cannot wait to find out what the splinter party from Alba ends up being called
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the ECB will never schedule an England-Ireland Test again, but if they do the trophy should be named for a great player for England and a great player for Ireland, so the Rankin-Murtagh Trophy
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was talking to a Labour person in London about this the other week, and they were genuinely shocked by my explanation of what multiple members of Scottish Labour’s Class of 2024 Are Actually Like
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e.g. this Westminster Hall debate last week, coming from the same Edinburgh Labour tendency that tried to shut down the city’s three licensed strip clubs against the wishes of the unionised workforce (!!)
(they lost in court in the end)
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025...
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the conference Motions being pushed by the transphobic campaign within Scottish Labour have been anti-sex work and anti-surrogacy for a while, they’ve been telegraphing it for aaaages
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surely i’m not the only one who heard the story about adjudicating a tense game of live Happy Hunting Grounds, then the story about not knowing when to wear the Italia 90 referee kit, and put two and two together
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(related to point #2 - the most undercovered story in Scottish politics right now is that the Scottish Greens membership aren't necessarily happy, some want the party to go even further to the Left, and don't seem up for any coalitions or compromise at Holyrood...
drive.google.com/file/d/1ISgn... )
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paradoxically, campaigning against a chaotic/controversial Reform admin in Cardiff might boost Labour's chances in Wales at a 2029 GE more than any other scenario
(see also: a chaotic minority SNP administration under Stephen Flynn or someone)
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2029 GE outcome also significantly contingent on what the landscape in the Senedd/Holyrood looks like - ~70 Lab MPs in Wales/Scotland combined - which is fairly unknowable
(also why the Starmer operation should've cared much more about trying to win those elections, but I digress...)
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saw two of the Bayern goals yesterday, and they played the Can Can, like they do at Bayern home games when a team is getting thrashed
embarrassing
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they never propose Edinburgh having a directly-elected Mayor, do they?
Presumably because Labour would come third in that election behind the Lib Dems...
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because a different think tank has to propose it every few months, regardless of all evidence to the contrary
(see also: an SNP-Labour GroKo at Holyrood, which is a good idea only in the minds of opinion columnists and zero voters)
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intensely Lib Dem behaviour tbh, fixing church rooves, as Kemi put it
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tbh "computer tells human to launch the ICBMs because the computer is bored and wants the human to shut up" does sound like a Douglas Adams plot
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they have covered Twelfth of July Orange Marches live in previous years, with Arlene Foster on the coverage
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Higham Ferrers actually was a Rotten Borough, as @andrewteale.me.uk's preview pointed out: andrewspreviews.substack.com/p/previewing...
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yep, a "law and order" pivot in ROI which started well before the Irish GE and didn't especially work electorally
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correct, this is entirely DUP/TUV areas, but worth noting that, at least rhetorically, there are commonalities with events in ROI, like this saga in a working class, historically Sinn Fein bit of Dublin: m.independent.ie/irish-news/d...
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this article also fails to mention that there already has been a Tory-to-LD defection this year - it just happened at Holyrood, not Westminster (and was seemingly fairly unplanned on the LD side)
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also the FM and DFM, as a joint office, alternate which questions they answer
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Executive Office Questions in the Assembly are more similar to Departmental questions - worth noting the Assembly had no provision for Opposition until 2016 - and the Opposition leader does not start the session, but asks the first Topical Question, seemingly: data.niassembly.gov.uk/HansardXml/p...
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(also the "you have to wait until the third party speaks for a serious clash of questions" PMQs dynamic is p much the status quo at Holyrood, and was especially true when the FMQs line-up was Sturgeon/Ross/Sarwar)
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worth noting that before the 2011 Holyrood election, the expectation was that a LD collapse would benefit Labour (and polling suggested it would), but in practice it benefitted the SNP under Salmond - the "anti-system" dimension of pre-2010 LD voters is underappreciated imo
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tbh “Scotland clusterfuck” is not a you problem, given the 1995 local gov boundaries are a classist gerrymander and Scottish Labour’s current policy is to reduce the number of NHS boards to three, as if you can split Scotland in three easily…
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once again I am wondering what happens when Iran/Jordan/Ukraine/whoever win their first game, celebrate with some kind of political gesture, and then Trump/Vance calls Gianni that night demanding they are thrown out of the tournament
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have heard at least one anecdote from Belfast during The Troubles of lads being persuaded by UK/US journalists to start throwing stuff at the police, because their news cameras hadn't got any decent footage yet
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John Swinney furiously taking notes on how to delay Council Tax reform even more
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Isaac Price only turns 22 in September, and he already has as many goals for Northern Ireland as George Best or Norman Whiteside
How many good players can we get without anyone noticing?
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makes sense when you realise that Miami/Montreal cannot be held later in the year (NFL/weather), and Vegas/Austin cannot be held earlier in the year (also weather)
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as Arlene herself has pointed out, bits of Northern Ireland have really good broadband speeds now, thanks to that deal
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(think the Steam counter is giving me too much credit here, as it likely counts time where FM was open but I was doing something else on my laptop, but still)
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it's funny when Steam asks you "Are you enjoying Football Manager?" and you get to click "No"
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once spent an hour running a seminar for students at a liberal-arts college in the US, which involved trying to get the students to imagine the perspective of people from another country, and it was like talking to a brick wall
we simply do not exist in their imagination, particularly
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the only thing that annoys me about this whole thing have been the posts asking people to try and get Western countries to intervene to prevent them being arrested
when the whole venture seemed designed, at least to me, to end in them inevitably being arrested by Israel
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and they had to get a normal white dude to host it, because of the Daily Mail meltdown if they’d cast a drag queen, as is tradition
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what kind of pre-qualifying tournament should weaker UEFA countries like Andorra and England play in?
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hanging on for the Highlands and Islands List results like it’s the final points of Eurovision
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sure, Scotland isn’t NI, and the structures are different, but easy to imagine no Holyrood party providing a candidate in a scenario where numbers are super tight - especially since only one obvious candidate (Liam McArthur) is even running in the 2026 election
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I mean, if Stormont’s any indication, simply electing a Presiding Officer could be a challenge, depending on the circumstances
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to be clear i’m not really making a prediction beyond the potential for getting to 6pm on Friday 8th May and the vibe being “now we enter The Cool Zone”/“here be dragons, abandon all hope”
(delete as appropriate)
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that is fair, but even so, capacity for extended limbo and uncharted territory in the devolution era - I wouldn’t be placing bets on stability of an SNP-Lab, SNP-Grn-LD, or Lab-LD minority gov
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and SNP being < 50 seats increases the possibility of no stable majority at Holyrood and a second election in short order significantly
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I mean this is also true about Punk and late 70s - I think God Save The Queen is literally the only pure punk song to get to Number One?
as Dominic Sandbrook points out, the Bay City Rollers were way, way more popular than any punk band
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Alex Easton, the ex-DUP MLA, taking DUP votes wholesale in North Down is what tipped it by the looks of it
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makes me less inclined to think Labour will meaningfully eat into the Reform vote in upcoming polling, but more inclined they could be competitive in loads of Holyrood constituencies next May?
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genuinely laughed out loud at this bsky.app/profile/adam...