Notices by Alan Ferrier (alanferrier@mastodon.scot)

Farage: Silence.
Tiny Tommy Ten-Names: Silence.
Grimes: Silence.
Hopkins: Silence.
6-Bob Knob: Silence.
Fox: Silence.
Tice: Silence.

Odd, that.

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

—Hannah Arendt, German Historian and Philosopher (1906-1975)

Labour has ordered the Home Office to begin mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

Writing in The Sun, Yvette Cooper says she has told the Home Office to raid car washes, nail bars and salons. 1,000 staff will be deployed to fast-track deportations.

"Change," eh?

So the candidate convicted of felony crimes by a jury who found him guilty of 34 separate charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor *isn't* the one who's dropped out of the presidential race?

The USA is deeply weird.

I'm definitely up for the series finale of the Donald Trump saga being the one where he loses to a Black woman.

Anyone heard how Liz Truss's first day at Microsoft is going?

He'll work with fascists but not with the SNP. Are you watching, Scotland?
https://news.sky.com/story/starmer-would-work-with-the-french-hard-right-as-thats-what-serious-government-is-13161908

In 2015 someone took the audio from the BBC’s coverage of a parade in North Korea and dubbed it over footage of Trooping the Colour at the royal birthday parade outside Buckingham Palace.

Farage being, once again, the top story on the BBC News website provides an excuse to repost this little slice of Internet poetry from 2017:

Fixed that for you, New Statesman.

Fun fact: England is the only country in the world to have fully privatised its water and sewerage systems.

Via the Financial Times: "Scotland—which has its own state-owned water company—massively outperformed its neighbours with water standards similar to much of Scandinavia."

That'd be the Nelson Mandela who said in 1997 that the ANC's struggle was ongoing. “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Tell me you don't know who Nelson Mandela was or what he stood for without telling me, etc... https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-labours-david-lammy-suggests-mandela-would-oppose-gaza-student-protests

The Rector of the University of Glasgow, a Palestinian witness to war crimes, is now banned from entering both Germany and France and, it would seem, the whole of Europe.

As the UK Home Office prepares to set the police on scared, vulnerable people in a desperate attempt to solicit votes from its racist base, we should all remember the words of historian and journalist Neal Ascherson, from 2017: #AsIf
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/15384883.neal-ascherson-scotland-must-act-independence-nation/

Nicely done, London Waterstones.

Documents relating to the Royal household are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

The UK Foreign Office said an exemption relating to communications with, or on the behalf of, the late Queen, was “absolute”.

One simple question: why?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/prince-andrew-files-royal-family-b2404639.html

On Thatcher's proposed state funeral - a view held fairly commonly in Scotland, but best expressed by Frankie Boyle: "For three million pounds you could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person."

An extraordinarily powerful protest as thousands line the seafront at San Sebastian in the Basque Country of Spain to denounce the ongoing massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli state.

The sirens you can hear in the background are those of Guernica.

A party that receives almost a third of its funding from an individual who's called for a member of the UK parliament to be shot shouldn't get to define what does and does not constitute extremism.

So all four senior members of the British Royal Family have suspended public engagements until further notice yet everything continues as normal, or as normal as things get on this deeply weird and dysfunctional wee island.

Every single one of the Windsors could cease all duties forever and barely anyone would notice apart from some sad royal gossip obsessives.

You know that "change" they keep banging on about?

You're not going to like it.