The Kate Forbes thread

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, velo army said:

As I said. They're the good guy party, but they need to be pragmatic and focus on issues that people care about to the extent that they will vote on it. Workplace democracy, anti-poverty measures, green new deal. Exciting things that people can get passionate about. They're making themselves electable to the few suburban middle class folk who were always going to vote for them. They're the appendix of the Scottish parliament.

I get that, but I wouldn't trust them to make a tofu sandwich if they abandoned a tiny minority they previously supported because of a social media campaign by Graham Linehan, JK Rowling and the Reverend Stuart Campbell.

[carpetmonster]

27 minutes ago, Trogdor said:

Swinney is catastrophically bald and has a ministerial track record to boot. He's better than Humza but it shows the real dearth of political talent up here. A safe pair of hands until some of the SNP talent from Westminster can be redeployed following the GE. 

As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.

Dross is a significant step down from Annabel Goldie and there’s no point in trying to deal with him if you don’t have to. Sarwar’s ‘vote SLab so we can protect you from Kieth’ was fairly chilling in that he’s implying we need protection from Kieth - and let’s be real; in the case he doesn’t just do as he’s told then Jackie Baillie will be deployed to eat him. 

Edited May 2 by carpetmonster

[velo army]

21 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I get that, but I wouldn't trust them to make a tofu sandwich if they abandoned a tiny minority they previously supported because of a social media campaign by Graham Linehan, JK Rowling and the Reverend Stuart Campbell.

I'm not suggesting a volte face, simply a reordering of priorities.

Edited May 2 by velo army

[Freedom Farter]

1 hour ago, velo army said:

As I said. They're the good guy party, but they need to be pragmatic and focus on issues that people care about to the extent that they will vote on it. Workplace democracy, anti-poverty measures, green new deal. Exciting things that people can get passionate about. They're making themselves electable to the few suburban middle class folk who were always going to vote for them. They're the appendix of the Scottish parliament.

I mentioned degrowth in relation to a comment in one of these threads a few days back. Rather than a set of defined prescriptions, degrowth is more a criticism of an aspect of Washington Consensus economics. it challenges the orthodoxy that pursuing increased GDP is always the best way to improve societal well-being. This seems a reasonable point considering things like India being 5th in the GDP list yet only 118th in the Human Development Index. Anyway, folk (fairly) scrutinised my comment on here and I realised degrowth had become stigmatised by its association with the Scottish Greens. That suggests to me they are probably very shit messengers although I wouldn't really know as I've never read anything Ross Greer has ever written and Lorna Slater just reminds me of Big Bird from Sesame Street. If they've even been using the term "degrowth" then they shouldn't have been. Politicians should always use accessible, everyday language and talk only about objective policy proposal.

Yet its not all the Greens' fault. I found this when I was googling. Its a reminder there's a very determined movement to stigmatise and misrepresent certain ideas: 

https://archive.ph/E5fpj

Environmentalism is welcomed by the mainstream media so long as its a completely defanged, mushy version. The moment anything too socialisty starts being espoused, especially public ownership of our energy resources (actual national sovereignty), that gets shut down.

[ogoftheskye]

57 minutes ago, Jedi2 said:

Lorna Slater, the other Green minister effectively sacked by Mr Yousaf dissolving the coalition deal, left little doubt that trans issues had been a factor in the demise of the arrangement.

 

She called on SNP members who “do care about trans rights” to quit the party and join the Greens'

Is P&B doing apprenticeships for the red tops these days?

[Ned Nederlander]

9 hours ago, Jedi2 said:

So Harvie and Sturgeon pulling all the strings...Harvie gets his wish to not have Forbes, and Sturgeon gets 'her' man in, with Swinney.

And now, Swinney can do another deal with the Greens in order to get legislation passed,(and the Greens can get the SNP to keep plugging away at their 'Equality' agenda).The continuity,continuity candidate.

Exactly the same pattern as the Tories in this parliamentary term...they handed the election of next leader to the members who botched it with Truss, same as the SNP with Yousaf. Next time around they cut the members out (too risky) and put Sunak in, unopposed. Now the SNP cut their members out (in case they plumped for Forbes) and have a Swinney Coronation.

 

[ScotiaNostra]

8 hours ago, Trogdor said:

Swinney is catastrophically bald and has a ministerial track record to boot. He's better than Humza but it shows the real dearth of political talent up here. A safe pair of hands until some of the SNP talent from Westminster can be redeployed following the GE. 

As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.

Thats one of the differences of the SNP post 2011, it was a bit arrogant, it didnt do the compromise part of politics well. It didnt build up good cross party political networks. Its one of the reasons why its in the mess its in now.

[ScotiaNostra]

7 hours ago, Freedom Farter said:

I mentioned degrowth in relation to a comment in one of these threads a few days back. Rather than a set of defined prescriptions, degrowth is more a criticism of an aspect of Washington Consensus economics. it challenges the orthodoxy that pursuing increased GDP is always the best way to improve societal well-being. This seems a reasonable point considering things like India being 5th in the GDP list yet only 118th in the Human Development Index. Anyway, folk (fairly) scrutinised my comment on here and I realised degrowth had become stigmatised by its association with the Scottish Greens. That suggests to me they are probably very shit messengers although I wouldn't really know as I've never read anything Ross Greer has ever written and Lorna Slater just reminds me of Big Bird from Sesame Street. If they've even been using the term "degrowth" then they shouldn't have been. Politicians should always use accessible, everyday language and talk only about objective policy proposal.

Yet its not all the Greens' fault. I found this when I was googling. Its a reminder there's a very determined movement to stigmatise and misrepresent certain ideas: 

https://archive.ph/E5fpj

Environmentalism is welcomed by the mainstream media so long as its a completely defanged, mushy version. The moment anything too socialisty starts being espoused, especially public ownership of our energy resources (actual national sovereignty), that gets shut down.

Ive seen/read that being talked about in every main media news over the last year

[renton]

9 hours ago, Trogdor said:

Swinney is catastrophically bald and has a ministerial track record to boot. He's better than Humza but it shows the real dearth of political talent up here. A safe pair of hands until some of the SNP talent from Westminster can be redeployed following the GE. 

As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.

2007 is a long time ago. The constitutional question has sunk any prospect of using the Tories or LDs to get a budget through. Even in those days Labour would demand and get budget concessions and still not vote for the bloody thing because the Bain principle is still the organising principle by which the Branch Office live.

 

[Freedom Farter]

[sparky88]

11 hours ago, Trogdor said:

Swinney is catastrophically bald and has a ministerial track record to boot. He's better than Humza but it shows the real dearth of political talent up here. A safe pair of hands until some of the SNP talent from Westminster can be redeployed following the GE. 

As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.

Minority government is only a problem for the SNP. Its not a problem for the electorate. 

Edited May 3 by sparky88

[Scary Bear]

11 hours ago, Trogdor said:

 

As for the scaremongering about minority government. The SNP governed just fine from 2007 to 2011 as a very small minority government. It means compromise and working with the other parties. That isn't something to be feart of it may well improve things.

It was on the back of that period that they won a majority of seats. 

[Scary Bear]

2 hours ago, renton said:

2007 is a long time ago. The constitutional question has sunk any prospect of using the Tories or LDs to get a budget through. Even in those days Labour would demand and get budget concessions and still not vote for the bloody thing because the Bain principle is still the organising principle by which the Branch Office live.

 

Using the Greens to prop themselves up will appeal to some ‘Progessive’ people, but I wonder how it will play with the electorate? Going on this current Parliament session, doesn’t look like it’ll go very well at all. The Greens are not for me anymore. Definitely not getting my unthinking ‘awww they like the environment and are pretty harmless’ list vote for the foreseeable. 

Independence isn’t happening, so competent government is what people are after. Even that is probably a pipe dream these days.

[renton]

16 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:

Using the Greens to prop themselves up will appeal to some ‘Progessive’ people, but I wonder how it will play with the electorate? Going on this current Parliament session, doesn’t look like it’ll go very well at all. The Greens are not for me anymore. Definitely not getting my unthinking ‘awww they like the environment and are pretty harmless’ list vote for the foreseeable. 

Independence isn’t happening, so competent government is what people are after. Even that is probably a pipe dream these days.

Regardless of whether independence happens or not, the polarisation of the Scottish parliament down those constitutional lines negates any attempts at compromise 'across the isle'

So the queation of where you find someone willing to vote with the SNP even if they agree on the principle of the motion being voted for, remains open.

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, renton said:

Regardless of whether independence happens or not, the polarisation of the Scottish parliament down those constitutional lines negates any attempts at compromise 'across the isle'

So the queation of where you find someone willing to vote with the SNP even if they agree on the principle of the motion being voted for, remains open.

The budget might be difficult but cooperation still happens, like with the GRA.

[SandyCromarty]

It was always going to be Swinney and as I mentioned earlier Forbes will be handed a cabinet job.

[Scary Bear]

35 minutes ago, renton said:

Regardless of whether independence happens or not, the polarisation of the Scottish parliament down those constitutional lines negates any attempts at compromise 'across the isle'

So the queation of where you find someone willing to vote with the SNP even if they agree on the principle of the motion being voted for, remains open.

Maybe best to just let that situation continue to play out publicly in the next 2 years. Then the electorate can decide the rights and wrongs of it. The issue will be if the public return the same sort of situation in 2026. I suppose eventually we’ll get sick of it and change our voting habits.

[Freedom Farter]

4 hours ago, ScotiaNostra said:

Ive seen/read that being talked about in every main media news over the last year

I didn't mean censored, I meant opposed and argued against.

[Freedom Farter]

13 hours ago, velo army said:

The thing with the Greens is they aren't much of a top down party. They're a democratic party whose manifesto is provided by the membership. I went to a meeting in about 2016 when we were planning to leaflet for a council election and they were just about to vote on a new manifesto, which was being passed around. It was full of gender equality type stuff that at the time was only the preserve of 19 year old Sociology students. Fair enough, and it didn't seem to dominate that much. I expected it to always be a policy and something that they cared passionately about. Good on them and they are genuinely a Good Guy party.

I'm bamboozled and disillusioned that they've basically become the trans party now. It's honestly bonkers and a huge, huge missed opportunity.

The Rainbow Greens might be a problem:

Quote

The Scottish Green Party Emergency General Meeting which would have decided on the Bute House Agreement wasn’t, as might have been expected, prompted by the Scottish Government’s decision to abandon the climate change targets it had written into law. That was a  watering down which happened with Green ministerial approval.

Rather it was prompted by the Scottish Government’s response to the report of the Cass Review into gender identity services for children and young people. The Rainbow Greens, the LGBTQIA+ section of the Scottish Greens, describe the report as an “internationally discredited social murder charter”. The Scottish Government response was perhaps unsurprisingly, more low key, causing much disquiet amongst the Rainbow Greens. They wanted the report rejected. The news that gender clinics in Scotland had already acted on some of the Cass recommendations was the final straw and the Rainbow Greens launched a petition to withdraw from the Bute House Agreement  because of clinical decisions not to prescribe puberty blockers to children.

This gained support from a wider section of the membership. They, while presumably not indifferent to social murder, seemed more concerned with that day’s other news, which was the abandonment of the climate targets. Patrick Harvie then began a round of media appearances where he was frank that he didn’t know how his party would vote culminating in ‘back me or sack me’ newspaper articles.

(https://labourhub.org.uk/2024/04/29/humza-interruptus/).

For contrast, here's a discussion of the Cass Report by two trans people. One is a regular Novara Media contributor and Green Party (of England and Wales) member. Their conclusion is there's nothing wrong with the Cass Report: 

https://youtu.be/7G9878EYgUo?si=f6GLLWshtkcJpmrd

[A Diamond For Me]

I'm not in the SNP so it's not really my fight, but I'd say SNP members ought to be - and probably mostly are - wary of the fact that so much of the boosting for Forbes come from the barking dullards of the right wing commentariat who might well enjoy deregulation, "listening to the business community" and kicking people from some or other culturally disfavoured minority but are never, ever, ever going to back or vote for independence.