A week off work – much needed. Lots of tinkering, house chores and downtime. Also stumbled on two cracking Post Box toppers, one celebrating Star Wars day!
Found these on my daily walks, now on day 3344 of consecutive walks of at least 30 mins…but the weight is still growing!
Politics unavoidable this week and Labour, particularly Keir Starmer, are in a right mess.
Some thoughts on the past week:
- We need an update of the voting system to better reflect vote share. Regional list votes help, but you can still see issues when you look at overall votes cast. From 2021, Ballot Box Scotland had a good analysis on options. Sir John Curtice also had a good analysis on how FPTP has now turned against Labout and Tories.
- Winners – Greens, Lib Dems and Reform. Also SNP but on a reduced vote share and number of seats. Losers – Tory’s and especially Labour given just two years ago they were probably favourites in Scotland.
- Seeing narrative that Scotland has moved more right wing – certainly more obvious due to Reform but 31 Tory seats in 2021 now read as 29 right wing seats.
- More nationalist supporting MSP’s than union supporting for the first time in a while. SNP said if they got a majority they’d move to have a referendum. That’s quickly pivoted to saying it was a manifesto commitment despite not having a majority hence they will move to have one.
- Also seen a few comments that until independence is settled SNP will always be largest party. What does settled actually mean – Scotland is independent? It’s probably more likely given Wales and Northern Ireland are all now being run by nationalist supporting parties. But settled assumes a split in the union, and although number of MSP’s tells one story, opinion polls still suggest 50/50 split and a quick tot up of number of votes from Thursday shows independence supporting parties got around 1.87M votes vs 2.57M for union supporting parties.
- Given rise of Reform and the number of MSP’s that were standing down there’s going to be a fresh look in the Scottish Parliament. Not convinced there’s any increase in talent.
- Will we see Labour use their majority in the UK Parliament to actually do something? I expected a more radical government but they’ve been shackled by committing to Tory spending plans despite the world being on fire and events causing massive impact. Unless Starmer pivots quickly, which is unlikely, then he and Labour are toast.
- Sticking to a manifesto is noble but futile…especially the left is called out when they want to deviate from a commitment but nobody actually holds parties to account on failed manifesto pledges. SNP pledges from 2021 are part fiction as an example, but was hardly a topic in the latest election.
- And speaking of holding to account, given the rise of Reform, will journalists actually do their job now and hold them to account? If they don’t like the questions and threaten to walk away…let them.
🔗 Links
- Why You Take Notes But Never Get Smarter – I felt seen reading this. Lots of notes, tons of bookmarks, when do I think and learn? So doing a lot of cleansing as I moved to Obsidian and rethinking working week to bake in more thought time.
- The era of AI malaise – For all the benefits of AI I can’t be alone in finding it tiring. Breathless release after release, constant threat of upending jobs. And how can I forget – the constant slop on social media.
- Behind the Scenes Hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview – Anthropic made a splash announcing and at the same time limiting access to Mythos but results published here are impressive. This is an arms race.
- How Britain ate, flirted and scored each other – nice use of AI and data to mine almost 20 years of Guardian Blind Dates
- Taken – god, this is eye opening. What a website knows when you visit…and stores. Nothing is for free especially on the internet.
- Dusk – It’s 20 years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube…and you can now play a much enhanced version on PC and Mac plus iOS and Android. Love it.