Fullerene

Honestly I don't that's true. We have already had 10 years of Tory government and I think it has been pretty crap and yet the Tories can still win again. I think it will only change when Labour is seen as a serious alternative which has not been true for years. Labour needs to be seen to be less focused on Labour and more focused on the population at large.

FTFY

IMO the only party that will move British politics to the left, in England at least, is the Labour Party. In the last four years, Corbyn has been leader of the party and is recognised as being on the left but I can't think of a single thing where he has shifted public opinion (as opposed to the party membership) to the left of where it was before he took charge. It is only the Labour Party in power that can shift opinion. If they can't ever win then they become an irrelevance.

1980s band "A Flock of Seagulls" once cancelled a tour of Scotland because nobody was willing to feed them.

I guess he was perceived as hating them. Not too keen on the national anthem, the flag, the monarchy, the military. Britain should apologise for its role in history. America and Israel too. Everybody else is not so bad. That sort of thing. Of course he has a point on some of it but he alienated a lot of people who might otherwise have voted Labour.

A recent survey found that 87% of optometrists expect next year to be really bad for business.

It's quite a small place. There is a sign that says "Welcome to Mid-Yell" and before I encountered anyone there was another sign that said "Please come back". Not much opportunity to establish its history or political, administative or religious structures. Maybe I should ask the next time I am there.

Cheer up. Look on the bright side. Maybe your plane will be delayed for hours and you get to listen to the whole game in some cold departure lounge somewhere. You never know.

He's somebody I knew when I lived there. He now lives in Crianlarich.

.. and Finland.

Agree with this. I have been there twice and got the impression they were into pomp and ceremony and general stuffiness. Maybe that is the stereotype but nothing I saw suggested otherwise.

I am not sure it is all about policy. I can remember when Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. Even if you did not know what his policies were, he did come across as a credible leader and it was not surprising when they won in 1997. You could argue that it went downhill once he was elected but that is a different matter. As well as Blair, there were several Labour MPs around him that gave the impression they knew what the job entailed. Again whether they did a good job or not was another matter. By contrast Jeremy Corbyn never played the role of Prime Minister in waiting. He was never expected to win the election except by some fluke. I was always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but time and again his performance was underwhelming.

Except that people are already fed up of the Tories. They saw the last government as one of the worst ever. Plus Boris Johnson is widely regarded as a liar, a buffoon and a clown. Yet he was seen as more credible than Corbyn. Labour should have strolled into power at this election but instead they suffered their worst defeat.

I've been to Mallaig.

Has anyone seen Die Hard 3. The one where Bruce Willis is stark naked in Harlem except for a sign that say "I hate n******s". I suspect this is something similar. Incidentally in Die Hard 3, the sign was actually blank during recording and they added the words into the film later using CGI. Trying to work out they have done the same thing here.

Historians have now concluded that Christmas should actually be around the 15th of January. So sorry everyone. Back to work tomorrow and we will try again in 3 weeks time.

My prediction: The review will conclude that it is because not enough people voted Labour and the Tories won more seats.

... and yet the MSM (in England at least) continue to plug away with "who's next to leave?"

Okay. So you just need a janitor to unlock the front gate. And here I was thinking Northern Ireland politics was more complicated than that.

Be interesting to see if Labour starts moving towards a more serious anything. At the last election it was seen as a hopelessly irrelevant protest party that was more concerned with talking to itself. What is the point in talking about issues that nobody is talking about?For the last ten years Labour has failed to grab the narrative on anything.

It will stop something being quoted on Twitter being regarded as news as opposed to propaganda.

Personally I think it is due to constant and unrelenting attack on the concept of being British. First there was the IRA saying "Brits out". Then surprisingly you have Margaret Thatcher. I can remember when there was British Rail, British Steel, British Telecom, British Airways and so on. None of these made a distinction between Scotland, England or Wales. Then privatIsation occurred and even if some of these still exist they often use the letter B rather than the word British. After the British Empire disappeared a lot of people started saying it had not been a good thing. They were probably saying earlier but nobody was listening. Even the British Commonwealth is politely referred to simply as the Commonwealth. Now that Scotland and Wales have a parliament (and sometimes Northern Ireland too!) a correction is often required when talking about the British parliament. So now you have lots of people who thought British and English were more or less the same thing being constantly corrected (and more so than before). "I think you mean English dear". Just my thoughts on the matter.

Not denying that either, but Corbyns vagueness on the subject was part of the reason he got humiliated last week Vagueness on everything actually The one time Theresa May got to talk about something other than Brexit was the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury. Corbyn's response was pathetic. "Maybe the Russians didn't do it. Let's go ask them". I can understand the need to avoid sabre rattling but a better and less naive response was needed.

Federalism would be brilliant solution for those parts of England that have been persuaded that Brussels is the cause of all their problems.

There are only two flights a week and previously only one a week so lots of people head down to the airport to watch the plane come and go. When I was leaving the local radio announced that the plane would arrive early and suggested we do the same. Apparently everybody did. So we all got on board and the plane left an hour early. That's a first for me!