The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing 28 February 2025, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
In the Herald today from Mark Smith ‘Feature Writer’:
The New Nasty: When did lefties become so vile? It was Theresa May who worried, some 20 years ago, that the Tories were becoming the “nasty party”, but let me tell you about a few of the things left-wingers have said to me lately. Let me also show you what some of the so-called progressives, the nice ones, have said, in public and private, openly and secretly. Then let me ask you a question: who’s nasty now?
The most recent example you’ll know about already: the Labour MPs and councillors in that now notorious WhatsApp group. One of them suggested a voter should be mown down by a truck. Another hoped a pensioner who didn’t vote Labour would die before the next election. Yet another accused someone of sounding “too Jewish”. And how about this one: “The public are a***holes.” I wonder how many of the members of the group have at some point tweeted the words “be kind.”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/24937728.new-nasty-lefties-become-vile/
That WhatsApp group? Lefties?
Andrew Gwynne campaigned with Starmer in the run-up to the 2024 General Election, fully supporting increased privatisation of the NHS, the cruel two-child benefit cap, the winter fuel allowance cut, support for Ukraine and defending Israel’s actions in Gaza. Lefties? The only Labour MPs who voted against the winter fuel allowance cut for pensioners and with the SNP on Gaza, were clear left-wingers who had managed to survive the purge of Corbynites after the Starmer ascension to power.
Closer to home for Mark, Rutherglen MP Michael Shanks backed all of the above and, is a signed up ‘Labour Friend of Israel. In May 2023, the selection of Shanks was condemned by the local Labour branch:
A Scottish Labour councillor has said the party’s selection process for a probable by-election was a “farce” and “profoundly undemocratic” after three “leading candidates” were not allowed to stand. Martin Lennon said he was “shocked that the top three most popular candidates locally were all blocked” from standing in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/labour-councillor-claims-rutherglen-hamilton-29869213
This was repeated across the country as Starmer-loyal [right-wing] Labour candidates, sometimes based in the South of England were helicoptered in, one from Kent!
The effect was clear. To a man and to a woman, these right-wing Scottish Labour MPs were 100% loyal to Starmer’s policies.
So, does Mark really think Labour is currently full of ‘lefties?’ I don’t think he’s thick so what’s he up to?
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The whole of British politics has moved so far to the right these days that being to the left of the Tories today puts labour roughly where Thatcher was forty years ago.
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”Lefties ” ? Aye , right ! The last ‘Lefty’ in the Labour Party left when Blair invaded Iraq!
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🎵 Righties to the right, lefties to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the mire with you🎵
Apologies to Stealers Wheel.
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Actually, the original was far more accurate!
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Labour, as in Labour UK now, Lefties ?
That’s an embarrassment and also fake news.
Clearly Labour UK’s plans for the whole UK is looking very much like a plan for the “Few and not the Many”.
Which is , as an action, one that is the opposite of what actual “Lefties” would do if they were in power, in fact a real Labour “Leftie” was the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who wanted his Labour party to act for and to serve “the many and not just the few”.
Funny enough there are others who are in Mark’s profession who see Keir Starmer and Labour UK’s current actions and words as being more Reform-Lite which again is the opposite of “Lefties” , however Mark prefers , or rather chooses , to ‘not go there’.
It does also make you wonder what reference or term would Mark Smith use to describe Jeremy Corbyn , as in one of the actual “Lefties” that Keir Starmer and his current Labour party through out of the Labour party .
Labour threw Corbyn out of their party for a fake reason.
However everyone knew it was really because Corbyn was not right wing enough for the Labour party, or rather he , Corbyn, was considered by them to be one of the awful “Lefties” in the Labour party , which the latest version of the Labour party needed to get rid of and so finally dispel the notion that Labour were in any shape or form a party of ‘Socialists’.
I do agree though that Labour is another “Nasty party” but that is because they are embracing their nasty side (again) in copying the words and actions we would normally associate with other “Nasty parties” , like the Tories and the Reform UK party , who are both considered to be more right wing, or rather , like Labour now , they are also definitely never seen as being political “Lefties” either.
What is he, Mark Smith, up to ?
God knows , but I am sure it is not for the good of Scotland as a country or indeed with the intention of trying to contribute positively and honestly to what is really happening in Scottish politics, and also within the UK politically too, either now or in the future.
Liz S
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The media appear to have been marshalled to attack Labour and build on the politically deaf decisions by Starmer and Reeves from the complaints department which have so angered the public.
The instance Mark Smith cites was absolutely unacceptable, but lefties they were not, “we’re all-righties” would be nearer the mark… Were this the ‘far-righties’ of the Johnson/Sunak period, you can be damned sure the WhatsApp messages would have been just as bad if not worse, but of course would not be published….
The scale of overruling membership nominations was by all accounts shocking – If the membership were the foundation of Labour, Starmer and McSweeney turned it to sand….
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One has to worry about the MSM giving Sturgeon a voice again.
Letting here run again will allow the Unionists to bring up perjury and any other shit they have on ger running up to the election
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