jmothecat

Jo Swinson seems the better choice. Although she was a minister in the government she didn't seem as involved as Cable, she would seem like a fresher start for the party, a break from the old guard, and I think she's a good communicator.

Farron claiming he can't be leader of a political party and be a Christian. Pretty much sounding like he's admitting he does think gay sex is sinful.

LAF, a lager from Banchory. It's ok,

Tommy's gonna get you.

No surprise, the Lib Dems had a disaster. Considering the vacuum in the centre ground their performance was absolutely woeful. His reticence to come up with a good answer to the gay marriage issue stopped his campaign from getting any sort of momentum and from then on they were a total irrelevance.

I could cope with Hayes leaving, but seeing him in a Celtic shirt.

I've spent the past couple of days going on about how England are the best ODI team in the world right now to my Pakistani colleague. May have to avoid him for the rest of the week.

We usually get Bea down between 7 and 8, lasts about two hours before she wakes up, has a quick feed, falls back asleep and usually every hour or two after that she will wake up a bit until about 7am. Definitely better than she was pre-6 months, but I've not had a full nights sleep for a long time!

I don't think they did enough to try to capture the remain vote, they just sort of assumed remain voters would naturally endorse independence in the event of leave winning. The issue they have faced is the group who voted remain last year and no in 2014 are a sizeable one who have remained unconvinced by independence.

I need to figure out how so many people get their children to sleep all night. Mine is 14 months old now and she still doesn't sleep through the night.

When was the last time our manager was poached, rather than given the boot?

Every. Single. Time. I wash my own windows. Never really understood why it's the one thing that folk seem to hire out.

He's a decent manager but I don't like the thought of watching the eye-bleed football he seems to like.

Ended up wearing my red and white one from the 2003 season at the cup final. My wife found it when we were clearing out boxes of old stuff and it remarkably still fits. Very comfortable.

D'jaffo

Greens probably have more in common with Labour than the SNP. The few greens I know in my constituency voted Labour this time round due to the lack of a green candidate, the former convener of the Scottish Greens publicly backed the Labour candidate in his seat due to a lack of Green candidate to vote for. Looking at the seats the Greens did run in they seem to back this up. I'm sure a lot of Green voters backed the SNP but Labour seem like the more obvious choice.

Wouldn't the greens not standing help Labour more than the SNP?

The Tories aren't who Labour are fighting with for seats in Scotland though. Ideologically I, and the rest of the party, are certainly more opposed to the Tories than we are the SNP, but we are fighting for seats held by the SNP, not seats held by the Tories. We aren't going to take the borders or Kincardineshire, but we've a chance in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We are competing with the SNP in Scotland far more than we are the Tories. Dugdale's pitch to unionist floating voters has everything to do with winning seats we can win and very little, if anything, to do with ideology. It's also worth noting that Kezia's major speech on this issue, the one she was pretty much trying to condense for the Sky interview, she did spend a lot of time criticising the Tories with a particular focus on the rape clause.

That's not what the headline writer thought in a Tory paper where there is an obvious advantage in trying to make people think that was her suggestion.

Why would she possibly suggest it? There is no advantage to her or for Labour for people to vote Tory over the SNP.

At no point does she suggest anyone should vote Conservative. Her quote is clear and unambiguous. It's typical SNP spin to try to portray it as something it clearly isn't. Just something for the 'left-wing' SNP voters to use to try to justify not voting for the only truly left-wing party on the ballot paper in most constituencies.

She was directly talking about and presumably to voters who wanted to beat the SNP. She conceded the point that Labour aren't best placed in certain constituencies to make the point that we are in most in the central belt. This is in no way encouraging voters to vote Tory.

It's absolutely clear what she was suggesting in those comments and it isn't voting Tory.

She was encouraging people who may not be inclined to vote Labour, but dislike the SNP, to vote Labour in central belt constituencies. It's obvious there is an element of anti-SNP tactical voting in Scotland, she was hoovering that up and trying to prevent the Tories from being the only beneficiaries. In Edinburgh North and Leith, for example, where the Tories finished third behind Labour the Tories were campaigning suggesting they were best placed to beat the SNP. Kezia did the right thing to try to counteract that and make sure those voters went with Labour and not the Tories. I would be more angry if she had ignored that group of unionist floating voters as well as any Labour voters in winnable constituencies who might have been considering voting Tory for whatever reason.