This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

McEleny demonstrating his continued ability to get his utter self-serving nonsense in the paper.

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Absolutely.

Indeed. And for a lot of the people involved the question of success was predicated on how much richer they got, which was usually a lot, as opposed to how sustainable a business they left behind. What's really powerful here is someone saying "We tried that and it was shit."

I mean, it was legacy chain stores financialising their assets by selling buildings to private equity in the first place. They didn't have to do that, but they pretty much all did and crashed themselves, leaving this blasted heath.

The clever thing here is it's not actually a lie to say that a handful of MEPs are keen on Scotland joining the EU. It's just not remotely relevant.

I have a lot of time for Richard Walker and he talks a lot of sense in this article.

www.thetimes.com/business-mon...

> at least 5 years. Those who seek to focus on how open a small subset of current MEPs are to iScotland joining the EU are to my mind deliberately trying to avoid focus on the real issues of iScotland's potential EU membership.

This resource may be useful in terms of further information:

> Scotland's current fiscal framework is based on transfers within the UK so current performance is also unusable as evidence. To warrant consideration for meeting the economic element of the Copenhagen criteria, Scotland would need to have existed as an independent state with its own currency for >

> possibly meet them today nor on day 1 of independence. That's because a key plank of the economic criteria is a *track record* of fiscal and monetary policy judged over a 3-5 year period. Without its own currency and central bank Scotland cannot demonstrate a track record of monetary policy, and >

There are broadly three strands of the Copenhagen criteria: political, legal and economic. As a former constituent part of a member state Scotland is likely to meet, or be close to meeting, the political and legal requirements. But the economic requirements are set in terms which mean we could not >

In the event of independence the question of if and how iScotland could join the EU has never had *anything* to do with how supportive some MEPs are. This is a deliberate sleight of hand intended to distract from the real questions which are about how we would meet the Copenhagen criteria.

Have I understood this correctly? Having clarified via the courts three years ago that when the Scotland Act reserved powers over the constitution it really did mean it, the SNP has decided to frame next year's devolved election as a means to deliver a second independence referendum? Curious.

There's just no functional process available to you to take in new information that contradicts your world view, is there. Instead you respond to rationally argued points with this sort of random list of mostly made up grievances. You are incapable of rational debate.

I like how the news will be like “while the President claiming Portland was ruled by a giant skeleton named Mr Nibbles is not strictly true, it does speak to the anxiety of many Americans”

hell yeah www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Meh, they weren't even fizzy ones.

Wonderful.

The pre-amendment process I presume?

The thing that always sticks in my mind is that Labour fought the 1997 election with George Robertson as Shadow Scottish Secretary, with Donald only brought in after the election.

Reminded by @kennyfarq.bsky.social that today marks 25 years since the death of Donald Dewar, a painful, tragic loss from which it could be argued Scottish Labour has never fully recovered.

He has republished his 2020 tribute and it's a lovely read.

thejaggythistle.substack.com/p/the-death-...

My first suggestion is that people like you stop saying things like "Scotland has the Criteria, we were part of it not so long ago. Still have same laws and regulations. Process would be done quickly if we want. ... As for currency it can be whatever we want."

Because it's utterly wrong.

I fully expect you to ignore what I have written here and continue to make your baseless claims, but at least now you can't say you weren't told.