The Tories have a well deserved reputation as the Nasty Party and during this general election campaign as they stare at electoral devastation in the face, the Tories appear to have decided that the reason they are so unpopular is because they are not being unpleasant and out of touch enough. The Conservatives are the political equivalent of that bullying kid at school who courts popularity by throwing rocks at a dug.
Let’s begin with Scotland’s very own Mr Nasty Tory, Douglas Ross. During his tenure as Scottish Conservative leader there has been a noticeable increase in boorish and hectoring interruptions from the Tory benches during First Minister’s Questions, very often led by Ross himself, who is clearly determined to bring Holyrood down to the adolescent barracking so characteristic of that House of Commons which is his spiritual home.
Just a day before nominations for the general election closed, three jobs Ross showed Scotland just how nasty he really is. Despite claiming just as recently as a few days ago that he had no intention of standing for Westminster as he was focused on his job as an MSP and leader of the Tory group at Holyrood – at least that is when he’s not focused on his job as a football linesman – Ross has changed his mind and is going to stand for Westminster after all, in the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat of sitting Tory MP David Duguid who has suddenly been deselected. Duguid had expressed his determination to stand again as Scotland really needs his services as a no mark mediocre Tory MP. However he is currently in hospital battling a serious illness. His colleagues have stabbed him in the back, the front, and the sides. Not even the Tories can trust the Tories.
Ross claims the decision to drop Duguid as a candidate was made by an independent Scottish Conservatives’ selection panel, a panel so independent that Ross sits on it. But then Ross knows a thing or two about Scottish Tory stitch ups, he only got the gig as Scottish Tory leader after the previous incumbent, Jackson Carlaw, who had been elected by the membership, was ousted in a putsch organised by Ruth Davidson. The Tories don’t respect Scottish democracy, but then they don’t respect their own internal party democracy either.
It’s a shabby and sordid move by Ross. If Ross had an atom of decency in his body he would pledge, that if he is elected, he will stand down when David Duguid is fit to return. But then David Duguid will most likely be bumped up to the House of Lords in Sunak’s resignation honours list. However this nasty and scummy little episode tells us all exactly who Douglas Ross is, both as a politician, and as a human being. This decision is most likely not unrelated to the fact that Ross has a wafer thin majority of just 513 in his Moray seat whereas Duguid’s majority is a rather more comfortable 4118 and the Tories hope to hold the seat, whereupon Ross would be ideally placed to throw his hat into the ring as leader of the Conservative party.
Ross has fled his Moray seat for a safer bet in order to escape the embarrassment of losing his Moray constituency, which would be to the general glee and amusement of the nation. To secure a seat where he had a better chance of winning, he arranged a stitch up at the expense of a desperately ill colleague. That, coming on top of the underhand and dirty way in which he became the leader of the Scottish Tories in the first place, tells you all you need to know about his character. This is one deeply unpleasant individual, a nasty man for a nasty party.
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes decried Ross’s underhand manoeuvre saying: “To quote one of Douglas Ross’s own colleagues, ‘this is straight out of the Farage playbook’ and I do not think it portrays the Conservatives in any decent light.”
Here’s hoping that as they cast their ballot, the voters of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East consider the character of the man who seeks to become their Conservative MP. If Douglas Ross is prepared to do the dirty on one of his own colleagues as he lies in a hospital bed recovering from a serious illness, he’d certainly be prepared to sell out the people of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East if they are foolish enough to vote for him.
On Friday Duguid released a statement in denying that his health precluded him for campaigning and he had very much looked forward to the campaign. He added that the management board of the Scottish Conservatives – on which Ross presides – that had taken the decision not to allow him to stand and it had done so without seeking medical advice or visiting him beforehand.
Duguid added that he was “very saddened by the way this whole episode has unfolded and it would be wrong of me to pretend otherwise”.
While the BBC was preoccupied with D-Day, that favourite obsession of British nationalists, it came to light that the Tories had continued to accept substantial donations from Frank Hester, even after it became public knowledge that Hester had made remarks about Diane Abbott which were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic. Hester had said that seeing Abbott, Britain’s longest-standing black MP, on TV made “you want to hate all black women,” and called for her to be shot.
The Conservatives refused to return the £10 million that Hester had donated to the party with one cabinet minister claiming the comments were made half a decade ago while Michael Gove said that Hester deserved “Christian forgiveness.” It has now transpired that the real reason Gove was so keen to offer Hester “Christian forgiveness” was because his party was still proffering the collection plate and Hester had given the Tories a further £150,000 after the story of Hester’s misogynistic and racist comments about Abbott had been made public.
It was confirmed on Thursday that Hester had given a further £5m to the Toriesbringing his total donations to more than £15m in a year. New allegations have been made that Hester has made repeated comments about race, religion and ethnicity long after the remarks he made about Diane Abbott, including in recent years.
Speaking to The Guardian, two former employees of TPP described Hester talking about an individual at a hotel in 2021 and saying she was attractive for a black woman.
That the Conservatives continued to take more money from Frank Hester even after his racist comments about Diane Abbott came to light tells you everything you need to know about the lack of principles of the nasty party.
With an opinion poll this week showing that Nigel Farage’s vanity vehicle Reform is snapping at the Tories’ heels and is polling just 2% behind the Conservatives, the Tories are looking at the very real prospect of meltdown. Douglas Ross won’t be the only Tory carpetbagger looking for a better bet elsewhere. The nasty party is in a nasty panic.
Hoewever that shabby story was quickly eclipsed by the shabby story that Sunak had buggered off early from the D-Day commemorations in Normandy in order to do an election interview with ITV that won’t even air until Wednesday next week. So Foreign Secretary David Cameron ended up in the world leader photos and video footage where Sunak should have been.Every normal person understood it was a day for statesmanship not politics, but not Sunak.
Much of the Tory party and the right wing media were incandescent with rage. Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie slammed Sunak saying: “I think it’s political malpractice of the highest order. It’s just not dignified. It’s not the right thing to do at a fundamental level.” And that’s a Tory saying that. Even the Daily Mail laid into Sunak. Farage will be rubbing his hands with glee, Sunak has just ensured yet more former Tory voters will desert him for Farage’s Reform party.
Sunak issued an apology saying that “on reflection” it was a mistake to leave early. But if the Prime Minister and his team managed to work out today that leaving the D-Day commemorations early was a mistake, why couldn’t they work it out yesterday?
Sunak wants 18 year olds to do a year of National Service but couldn’t even manage one afternoon of National Service himself. The Tory party has killed itself. This is Sunak’s “bigoted woman” moment. The Tories are beginning to realise that the man who lost to Liz Truss isn’t the brilliant campaigner they thought him to be.
Sunak and his miserable party deserve electoral obliteration, the real tragedy is what will replace them.
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BREAKING: Scottish unemployment figures fall to all-time low helped in no small measure by Douglas Ross taking 3 jobs.
Lol, I suppose he can also argue he’s just making sure British jobs are give to British workers too.
The more jobs he does, the less are taken up by ‘furriners’!
The Tories are toast. Q
Burnt toast at that.
Ross is the guy that the most recent massively oversampled labour 2019 poll suggests would be preferred by Scots as FM over Labour’s Sarwar if they were forced to choose between two shades of sh*t.
Douglas Ross’s position as Scottish Tory leader ‘not tenable’
DOUGLAS Ross “may need to step down” as Scottish Tory leader after the General Election, according to party sources.
It comes after Ross decided to run in the General Election in the place of a candidate deemed not well enough to stand by his party.
The Scottish Conservative management board – of which Ross is a member – ruled former UK Government minister David Duguid is not medically well enough to stand for the party in the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat.
But Duguid, who was taken into hospital in April, insisted in a post on social media that claims he is “unable to stand” due to ill health are “simply incorrect”.
Rival parties have claimed Ross has “betrayed” a colleague by putting himself forward to stand in the seat – a decision which came after he previously said he would quit Westminster to focus on Holyrood and his post as party leader in Scotland
Let that sink in. Ross is beating Sarwar in polls that can could not be more Labour Friendly. Think what the reality is…
Ooops, link. https://archive.is/fawfz
Says the Prince of WALES.
IF ever there was a time or place NOT to quote that poem this was it.
See my comments on the previous thread.
#Not my Prince.
Not to mention ‘Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Baron of Renfrew, Earl of Strathearn, Duke of Rothesay, Lord of the Isles, Earl of Carrick’ and in Northern Ireland, Baron Carrickfergus.
He has more Scottish titles than some folk have had hot dinners, as the saying goes.
must admit never had you down a a fan of early 20th century poetry – but you must be seeing as you keep quoting it
“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling“
The war to end all wars.
Probably most of us had family there on D-day (and also Dunkirk). And the troughing pig Sunak put an interview before his duty as PM of the so-called UK. I have utter contempt.
I imagine it’s quite a moving poem to English people, particularly in the circumstances.
For those that may not know it:
https://poets.org/poem/soldier-0
The Soldier
Rupert Brooke 1887 – 1915
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.
There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Of course, like every country, we Scots had our own war poets, including those writing in our native languages:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/tag/world_war_ii/
For Alasdair
Douglas Young
Standan here on a fogg-yirdit stane,
drappan the bricht flees on the broun spate,
I’m thinkan o ye, liggan thonder your lane,
i the het Libyan sand, cauld and quate.
The spate rins drumlie and broun,
whummlan aathing doun.
The fowk about Inverness and Auld Aberdeen
aye likeit ye weel, for a wyce and a bonny man.
Ye were gleg at the Greekan o’t, and unco keen
at gowf and the lave. Nou deid i the Libyan sand.
The spate rins drumlie and broun,
whummlan aathing doun.
Hauldan the Germans awa frae the Suez Canal,
ye dee’d. Suld this be Scotland’s pride, or shame?
Siccar it is, your gallant kindly saul
maun lea thon land and tak the laigh road hame.
The spate rins drumlie and broun,
whummlan aathing doun.
This poem was composed while Young was fishing on the banks of the Calder at Lochwinnoch in 1941, in memory of a Highland student at Aberdeen, killed during the German advance into Libya.
It’s hard to understand how he could do such a thing.
“Oh, Duguid’s ill. Great, I’ll grab his seat. It’s a bigger majority.”
I hope the voters of that mangled constituency will do the right thing and refuse to elect this carpet bagger. He only gets into Holyrood because he’s on the List.
Remember the great cry of horror which went up when the Scottish Government was accused of failing to spend half a billion of EU structural funding? The first cries emanated from Bath but were soon echoed by Jackie Baillie at FMQs only to be swatted down by Kate Forbes. Incompetent! Cruel! Evil” Failing Scotland! etc etc
Well SPICE has posted the correct figures using EU receipts and it turns out that:
That is £115,495,280.00 unspent funding to be precise. Often projects fail to get off the ground and all the projects are initiated by Local Authorities, Scottish Enterprise and NDPBs such as Nature Scot.
https://tinyurl.com/ymfjttcp
Possibly not the end of the story either – I think the ScotGov are trying to get an extension from the EU. Given the goodwill I’d give it 50-50.
I don’t blame David Duguid for wanting to try and remain as an MP in the coming election. After all he has bills to be paid as all of us do and an MP’s salary is not to be sniffed at.
Well, DRoss has not only ensured there will be no more MP’s salary or expenses to claim by Duguid, he has also ensured that there will be no “redundancy” package for Duguid as is the norm for all MP’s who fail to retain their seats after losing at the ballot box and are entitled to a severance payment of £19,000.
DRoss knew all of this. of course but still done the dirty on him simply because he could and he wanted the money on offer for being an MP himself even though he can’t possibly be in two places at once and represent his constituents at Holyrood and Westminster at the same time.
Douglas Ross is a greedy back stabbing runt of a man and anyone voting for him in this election will deserve everything they will get.
Ross is a skunk but without any of its attractive features.
DRoss, Sarwar? same thing
British nationalist obnoxious arrogant self absorbed obedient servants of their masters of the Great British English UK
They represent absolute loyalty to a nasty political faction of an invented country that doesn’t exist, they’ve invented flags uniforms and documents for us all to revere and respect, and if we show our loyalty and respect to our own flags and countries (Scotland Wales England and Ireland) they rage and decree that we are unpatriotic to the country they invented
Pretty much sums things up for the Conservatives, they have manged to piss everyone off, and when its Conservative right wing commentators pointing it out you know your screwed:
I see Stephen Flynn won the BBC debate.
English BBC and Guardian takes:
Seven takeaways from multi-party BBC election debate
3. Flynn landed blows on public service cuts
Stephen Flynn, the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, did well with the audience in the BBC’s Radio Theatre, winning plenty of applause...
https://archive.is/54YpE#selection-1607.0-1621.262
‘Well that was dignified’: key takeaways of BBC general election debate
4. Stephen Flynn was the biggest winner of the night
Politically, the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, gained the most from the debate. A slick media performer, he took aim at the Conservatives, Labour and the entire Westminster ecosystem, and touted SNP successes without being quizzed at any length about the party’s record in government.
He was applauded by the audience several times including for pointing out that university tuition was free in Scotland, for detailing the benefits of immigration for public services and for denouncing Brexit. “Let me say a few home truths, particularly to some members of this panel,” he said. “Migration is absolutely essential to our public services, our businesses and to our economic growth.
“We need migrants, and this race to the bottom on migration driven by Nigel Farage, followed by the Conservative party and hotly chased by the Labour party, does not serve Scotland’s interests, and it does not serve your interests either, so rise up against it.”
The debate adjudicator was hopeless, and simply could not seem to prevent the two Lab/Tory panellists from indulging in lengthy diatribes at each other, like banshees.
God help us whichever of them gets into power next month.
Labour policy. Hence ‘Starmer the kid starver’.
https://archive.is/4K5tj
Two-child benefit cap is ‘key driver of child poverty’ in UK, research suggests
Study finds strong correlation between local child poverty levels and percentage of families affected by cap
Subsample warning, but it seems Yougov applying MRP methods to their teeny regular samples benefitted Labour in Scotland, only for that to vanish very quicky since as the SNP have been rising rapidly since.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/voting-intention?period=3m&crossBreak=scotland
Seems it took 9 points off the SNP, so they’d be on 40% now, with Labour on 28. Given UK-wide ‘forecaster polls’ (squeeze DKs etc) had the SNP on 38(+6)% 3 days ago, 40 in one today would not be out of place.
MRP could have odd effects on small subsamples, so caution. That jump for labour is looks very method related. Yougov’s panel is historically vey labour heavy in Scotland.
Either way, another data set showing SNP trending upwards. It’s present in all of them.
On my mistake. That spike is May 30th, before the method change, so it did correct Labour downwards as happened UK wide. Doesn’t change the SNP trending up pattern. Could see crossover soon in this series.
Which is of course not properly weighted to the Scottish demographic, so trends not absolute numbers matter.
And I forgot the latest More in Common poll which is a forecaster.
Add that in and SNP are 40(+7)% now compared to election announcement based on their UK-wide average corrected for population share.
Each day a new little swallow appears. We may see summer yet.
Who knows, we could even be heading to Europe in more than one way!
Kirsty Wark is a secret independence supporter, her friend English comedian Lee Mack says, but she is under threat by the BBC of her career ending if ever she admits to it
Mack blew the Gaff on the programme “would I lie to you” then quickly tried to cover it up by saying the opposite after a stern glance from Wark
Do I believe it? hells no! but we know what the BBC is like so *Wow* it’s possible
I have been contemplating re joining the SNP for a while to which this morning I viewed the clips of Stephen Flynns performance during the tv debate last night that Proud Cybernate has posted on his X account and I thought aye go on that will do for me, so so the application has just been sent off through the SNP web site and a ten shilling postal order will follow.
I’ m sure I won’t be alone.
Welcome back.
Aye, welcome back into the throng
A picture speaks a thousand words as they say.
This is how you get the unionist VI up while they go backwards in terms of the total electorate
A large section of 2019 voters just vanished early 2023 and progressively since, going completely silent, with the hole filled by non regular voters to make up the difference. This drops the turnout projection from 68% in 2019 to a dire 57% in May 2024.
It also allows Labour to move ahead of the SNP in VI polls without winning a single voter from them net, but only from Con. Lib go up while standing still. Overall big three / unionist vote share of total electorate falls a few points as Yes rises a few points over the same period in line with multi-decadal trends.
Silly numbers for ‘other’ start to appear as their very low share is over inflated. A mid term ‘who I support not who I’ll vote for under FPTP’ 5.7% is nearly doubled to 10%.
Now I say silent SNP 2019 because I don’t know what they are now. All we know is they’re SNP 2019/2021. Also in all probability SNP as far back as 2011 to allow the SNP to have achieved such high numbers in elections.
Tentative signs they are starting to speak. Was only in the last 2 weeks ahead of 2019 they started talking last time. Was 6 weeks for 2011. Was in Q4 2014 for 2015.
There were huge numbers of them mid term 2007-2011 and 2011-2015 as they came under massive ‘You are economically illiterate anti-English racists that the EU won’t let in and look the polls show Yes falling! It’s over, forget it!’ etc assaults.
There were less off them in 2019 after the attacks on the SNP reduced in the aftermath of their 2017 setback. 8% of so at times compared to 11.4% in May 2021 (of total electorate). They came out of the woodwork in the final two weeks in 2019 as noted, although 3% never spoke to the pollsters, causing under-prediction of SNP. They just went out and voted SNP again. Only Ipsos saw them coming (44% final poll).
This one for skier – from a document I’m translating:
“The Electoral Commission estimates that 8 million eligible voters will miss out because they are not properly registered. 4 million eligible voters will miss out because they don’t have Photo ID. And 14 million eligible voters won’t see the point of turning out to vote.”
(Bolding is in the original).
This would yield a record low 55.8% turnout.
Which is what my numbers point to if you forward project optimistically.
In the latest (1 week old now) English poll of the Scotch by Redfield and Winton, which is supposed to be good for the union, 41% of Labour 2019 now support Scottish independence.
Some seriously high figures being hit here. This is what’s driving the ‘More likely to vote Yes if Labour’ win numbers up.
It’s not SNP now Lab saying Yes. These don’t exist NET. It’s right there in the Labour 2019 cross-tab.
You can also see the more unionist leaning SNP 2019 oversampling in the % of SNP 2019 who back No. This goes up sharply by about 10% as silent SNP develops. They’re answering, Yes SNP much less so.
I think we can all safely conclude that SNP voters are not going off indy while Labour warm to it right? That would be your rather comically contorted alternative answer. 🙂
Cant’t help thinking that Sunak was ‘misinformed’ about what and where he should be – a cunning conspiratorial ploy to throw him out and shove another more devious creature in the pm role leading up to the ge.
Even if this is a crazy idea, we all know the tories do play their own nasty game to suit their own nastier agenda and with every nasty slime up their sleeves, they will still get voted back in to number 10 🙄. Dross has already deploying his trail of slime.
Douglas Ross = S***ty Nasty Obnoxious Tory.
Decided I shouldn’t be silent SNP myself. Making my own life harder!
So signed back up to a few of the English panel pollsters after many years of being silent to them.
Sunak has cancelled all his appointments with the media today and won’t be doing any interviews.
Oh that’s a shame.
He has a rare talent…
😂
Think it’ll be change of leadership time for the nasty bastard brigade again…
UK turnout prediction remains at just over 51%.
So still no mandate for Labour.
Another wee swallow? Deltapoll join BMG and Ipsos (5%) with a wee 4% UK wide for the SNP. That equates to 48% in Scotland for averaging purposes based on population share.
4+%’s have been like hen’s teeth recently (outside of lone voice in the wilderness IPSOS telephone who have stubbornly had the SNP on 3.8% aka 45%). Now 3 in a week. Also, the frequency of 2%’s is dropping like stone in favour of 3% for those polls at the lower end for the SNP.
I have the SNP conservatively up 5%+ since the GE announcement, although this seems to have mainly come post two erse cheeks debate, matching a small but noticeable rise in turnout of 0.5% or so UK-wide. A tiny rise here seems to have delivered a 5%+ boost for them, which would be very positive if correct.
And yougov just found a silent SNP in the form of me. I’m not alone it seems looking at the rise in SNP they appear to be seeing.
Still a long time to go. In 2019, the SNP only shot up in the last 2 weeks. We have just over 3.5 weeks to go.
I note the last ‘Scotch’ or Scottish poll was over 1 week ago now. Odd given that the frequency here correlates with how low SNP share is. The worse they look, the more polls we see published by the British / English media.
And the last one looked very much like an outlier compared to all the rest. From the mysterious R&W who came out of the blue to regularly poll us after Sturgeon stepped down, and while needing just 2 days to do so. Incredible given pollsters that have been polling us in the northern colony for decades are struggling to do it in double that time recently, sometimes taking them 8 days to get enough SNP 2019 to respond.
Hmm, CTV in Scotland hasn’t gone up yet. It’s edged a little down based on UK-wide polls. Yet SNP has apparently gone up 5%+.
That suggests movement from unionist 2019 to SNP rather than silent SNP engaging. These only began engaging 2 weeks before last time I suppose.
Led By Donkeys has produced a nice election video for Rishi Sunak “This is who he is”.
Yep, he’ll soon be “home”….
A man of the peeple
The National’s lead title could have been written by the Sun, “Bombshell analysis shows what Labour’s secret austerity plans could buy Scotland” https://archive.ph/p1wvv and the ‘analysis’ turns out to be straightforward divide a number by another number. Wow…
You might think that after more than 4 decades of imposing austerity (never mind the headline last 14 years under the Tories) to get “debt falling as a proportion of GDP” the penny might have dropped with UK politics that they’ve got it all wrong which is why it hasn’t worked…. But oh no, instead they insist on banging the public’s heads against the neo-liberal-economics wall insisting it WILL happen THIS time…. AGAIN…
Is it possible that it’s actually working fine for them, so they haven’t noticed yet that the penny’s beginning to drop with those of us for whom it isn’t?
It’s the “it’s actually working fine for them” which is the problem. It’s not that they “haven’t noticed yet”, quite the contrary, hence the frenetic activity by both sides of England’s political hegemony to keep the lie alive, courtesy of it’s captured media.
‘The most unpopular incoming government in British history’ ((C) British press), winning a massive majority of seats on the lowest turnout in a UK election ever, which is overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box by Scots.
Independence is very, very close folks. Remember, life comes at you fast sometimes. Since early 2023 we have had an eerily quiet calm before the storm IMO. Such events often happen very rapidly and when people least expected them.
Scots can rest assured that they don’t need to vote Labour to stop the Tories. England will do that for them. And Starmer is weak willed, so if you want iref2, him in No 10 is ideal. All you need to do is vote SNP.
Like the SNP, Sinn Fein and the SDLP will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of Labour back in office. After all, the SDLP is Labour’s sister party, and Labour are ostensibly supposed to support the principle of reunification. If Starmer resists a border poll, it will drive up support for reunification and the international community will force him into one. At the same time, we can expect that Starmer’s right-wing English nationalist ‘New BNP’ will be driving folks there towards indy like it is in Scotland. Who knows, the Irish parties might even win a majority of N. of Ireland seats in the GE, which means planning for a border poll. And if the Irish can have one, why not the Scots? Protests would begin. People would take to the streets in even greater numbers to protest against Labour than they already have over Gaza. Will make the Iraq war protests look teeny by comparison.
Planets are very much aligning and England / Britain is sleepwalking into it.
Oh dear.
https://archive.is/w2Y8m
Douglas Ross accused of using MP expenses while working as referee
SCOTTISH Tory leader Douglas Ross has been accused of using his MP expenses to travel while working as an assistant referee while his team covered it up.
According to the [pro-UK / Labour] Sunday Mail Ross’s team have identified 28 claims he made to Westminster while carrying out work as a football referee after he had already been confronted about possible rule-breaking.
The findings have only recently come to light after the fallout over Ross ousting sick colleague David Duguid to stand in his constituency of Banff and Buchan last week.
A senior Tory source revealed to the Sunday Mail the team discussed the travel claims when contacted by journalists but hoped nobody would pick them up.
We could see Ross being ousted soon.
”We could see (D)Ross being ousted soon .”… is there a vacancy in a Scottish village awaiting him ?
A shame Polphail was demolished, it sounds fitting…
From the National:
“Douglas Ross accused of using MP expenses while working as assistant referee“
If this turns out to be true then as well as being hounded through the press for over a year, he should be spoken about multiple times in both Parliaments and the changing rooms, put before multiple disciplinary committees, suspended for 27 days from both parliaments and refereeing – and fined 54 days pay from all his relevant jobs.
I am clearly, like Annie Wells, fit to be on any of those disciplinary committees and would not need to recluse myself as being biased in any way at all.
That’s the thing about Tories, they don’t want to work hard to pay their own way, rather they much prefer lazily spending other people’s money.
I just realised the source of that story – the Sunday Mail. Which has as strong a relationship with truth as a microwave has with an iceberg. It reported for instance that the Wetherspoons guy had told his staff to take supermarket jobs during Covid whereas what he had said was he’d understand if they did rather than stay at home, as supermarkets needed thousands of delivery drivers, and that they’d be given preference when the pubs reopened.
It also reported that Wetherspoons had a turnover of £1.8 billion – which would be a good trick with all its pubs closed and doing zero business, but with most of the overheads continuing like rates, rents, water, insurance, repairs, electricity and so on.
The Record and the Independent did the same, but all published a retraction in January of this year, as I found out only while going for my fifth coffee refill at a spoons.
Why do I ever believe even for an instant, what I read in the benighted media?
Sorry I have no sympathy for the moron that owns Wetherspoons and cannot understand how any Indy supporter would express any sympathy for him or his company. He is a Brexiteer scumbag and his company treated their staff abominably in regard to COVID furlough payments and wages particularly at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I know this because I was an Advice Worker and dealt with at least two of their staff at that time. I haven’t set foot in a Wetherspoons since before COVID and have no intention of doing so ever again. As for the Sunday Mail I have read more factual comment on toilet walls than in Daily Record or Sunday Mail.
Your last paragraph says it.
My point was how easy it is to be almost caught by media, and I’ve considered myself near immune for decades.
Thing is, after the Duguid thing you want to believe the story about his expenses, so you (well, I) don’t question it’s source – the, indeed, toilet wall accurate Sunday Mail.
Still, there’s little doubt Kilroy was here. Somewhere.
Do you think the Tories have a death wish? How else to explain their abysmal performance. Of course, Labour are so bad it must be really hard to come in second as in “hold my beer”.
I’m with skier on this with regard to a low turnout. (I have to be honest that I don’t always understand his polls, though,)
This is from further documentation I am translating:
“With just a few weeks to go before the election, we face a crisis in democratic participation.
[…]
The Voter Registration Champion Scheme
The Voter Registration Champion scheme is a pioneering non-partisan accreditation program from Citizens UK that awards a Voter Registration Champion badge to organisations that ensure their members are prepared to participate in democracy. This scheme acknowledges faith and community organisations, schools and universities, and employers that assist in making their constituents ‘election-ready’ by ensuring they are registered to vote, are informed about the new photo ID requirements, and are encouraged to vote.
Partnering with various organisations, we aim to prepare 300,000 at-risk voters for the upcoming general election. More information is available at http://www.voterchampion.org.uk
[…]
With the UK General Election coming up on July 4th, and the deadline for Voter Registration on June 18th, we have only a few weeks to make that happen – so we need your help!
We’re asking every organisation that can to do three simple things in Voter Registration Week (June 9th-18th 2024):
[…]
_________
The organisation involved (a charity called Citizens UK is registered in London and has no representation in Scotland. Its one Chapter in Wales is called, unsurprisingly, Citizens Cymru, but outside using my professional services it has no features in correct Welsh.
DRoss’s home should be subjected to a murder tent and police search to find documents pertaining to his expenses, followed by 50 journalists parked outside with cameras pointed at his family, then a raid on party offices followed by interviews with MSPs as to what they knew regarding this deception and complaints made to the procurator fiscal and crown office
A disgruntled Gander
Well, further confirmation (in addition to the 33% rise in average time required for a survey to get enough respondents) English panel pollsters have been struggling to get their quotas (of SNP 2019) in Scotland.
I sign back up to Yougov plus Survation yesterday, and get polled by both of them this morning on voting intention / political questions.
I note both polls appeared to be UK-wide as the leadership questions all related to English parties.
All got big fat thumbs down from me. Only the English Greens were given some durability. And of course Plaid Cymru! That goes without saying.
Another reason we need independence is English elections destabilise our own governments.
PR works by alliances. English Westminster elections threaten such alliances by forcing parties which may be in alliance in our parliament to fight against each other in a second set of general elections.
There is little doubt this was a factor in the end of the BHA. Both parties knew a UK election was coming.
We don’t need two parliaments and two general elections. The normal is one parliament with one election for that for good reason.
Far more efficient cost-wise too. We are paying for two parliaments, two sets of parliamentarians, two sets of wages / expenses etc. Sending MPs to Westminster is very carbon intensive too, what with all the flights. Better on the taxpayer and planet if we go independent.
The silence from BBC Scotland over the DRoss story is deafening… Sorry James Cook but picking out part of the crowd for a diversion can’t work this time….
Will the Conservative manifesto actually contain the conscription policy? Surely they’ll have to remove it. They can’t now have Sunak in front of a camera, or in front of a live audience, going on about the importance of national service, can they?
Are they not replacing that with the offer to shoot 100 disabled people every day in order to reduce the benefits budget?
Aiming for the traditional Tory base.
That might have been better phrased…
They could argue Sunak would have had more respect if national service had been around when he was of age. 🙂
BBC backing Labour in Scotland hoping to defeat the SNP.
BBC backing Reform in England hoping to defeat Labour.
Go figure.
BBC backing Labour in Scotland hoping to defeat Plaid Cymru (probably).
Go figure.
Was hardly going to be possible the BBC to avoid this story.
https://archive.is/hrhWc
Ross travel expenses allegations ‘significant’ – Swinney
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross is facing “significant and serious” allegations that he used Westminster expenses to travel in his role as a football linesman, the first minister has said.
John Swinney said reports in the Sunday Mail, if accurate, would amount to a “potential misuse of public funds”.
I’d venture the story came from inside the Tories as revenge for him taking David Duguid’s seat off him to keep himself on the gravy train. People knew what he was up to with his sneaking claims and have been saving it up to stab him at just the right moment.
Another reason why I said not to take polls as some real measure of support was silly levels for Con the English panel pollsters have been getting. They’ve predicted a Con surge in Scotland, with e.g. 17%, sometimes 20% support while they’ve collapsed in England. Scots moving to indy and the Tories lol. Na, this is just SNP under-sampling inflating Con.
The golden rule is Con in Scotland is just over half England. So 23% con England is like 14% here. They face total wipeout here just as much as in England. SNP should take every marginal seat and possibly more. We could be looking at a blue Tory free Scotland.
This is being picked up now by some pollsters, with 10, 12% Con showing up.
8 hours after the 1st comment was made to the story in the National 🙄
In The Observer today there was an article by Andrew Rawnsley
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/09/in-all-this-noisy-election-debate-why-is-there-a-conspiracy-of-silence-about-brexit
Over 1000 comments. My comment got 169 likes yet did not make the ‘Guardian Pick although many of the ‘picks’ had fewer, much fewer likes.
Here is my comment can you see why it wasn’t picked?
“”Well Stephen Flynn (SNP) did not have any problem mentioning Brexit, and things such as immigration, in the 7-way debate last week and received applause from the audience for doing so.””
I think I know why.
Because the mention of “independence” is also banned?
Capella,
No mention of ‘independence’ but did mention SNP and applause for one of their politicians. Obviously a no, no on that site.
You were lucky it wasn’t just deleted as has happened to mine occasionally when you show how selective their headline is when it comes to Scottish politics which are very different from how they view “UK” politics when they really mean England.
ooh I was one of your “like” for your comment 😊
Now 194 likes.
Why would he claim SFA expences from Westminster and not the SFA? Unless . . .
” …and not the SFA ?” Because he knows SFA !
Is this the same Douglas Ross who demanded over and over again at FMQs that Michael Matheson should resign as an MSP because he didn’t know how he could have racked up a huge connectivity bill (but paid for it himself once it became clear)?
That Douglas Ross?
The Douglas Ross’s of this world don’t think the rules apply to them, rules are for the “little people” to follow.
Political compass has updated for the 2024 election. They adjust as policies come in.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
Will be interesting to see where Labour stand relative to Le Pen’s pro-EU National Rally. NF were centrist economic authoritarian previously, but since then they’ve become NR and pro-free movement EU, ergo considerably more socially liberal, in an attempt to win votes (got only 16% of total electorate in yesterday’s low turnout EU vote).
English Labour are +10 right / authoritarian (5.5 economic right + 4.5 authoritarian) compared to Le Pen’s lower 8.5 (1 right + 7.5 authoritarian) in 2022. I expect the NR will be considerably more centre than that now they’ve embraced EU membership. Political compass should update soon now Macron’s called an election.
Unfortunately in France, the system is not fully PR and so became rather 2 party dominated like the UK, which drove down turnouts over the past decade or so, allowing less salubrious parties to make apparent inroads, even if their real support is low. Even with that, Pen’s NF were going nowhere, so had to name change and move centre liberal pro-EU to make any progress.
Anyone know why the BBC doesn’t call Lab/Con/Ref ‘far right’ when they are far more right-wing authoritarian than parties in the EU it does describe as this?
Le Pen’s NR are pro free movement EU, which is far less right wing that the pro-Brext anti-free movement English Labour party for example.
And why does the English / British press always talk about the ‘rise of the right’ in Europe when the right win some elections in some countries, but not ‘the rise of the liberals / left’ when the liberals or left win? The socialists just won Spain and Tusk’s pro-EU centrist liberals just ended the long reign of the Eurosceptic right in Poland.
That’s the good thing about the EU, it can’t become racist right wing. If a member becomes all anti-furriner right wing, it departs; England / the UK being case in point. Same if a member became very hard left; it could not stick to free trade rules so would need to depart. It makes the EU balanced and moderate by nature.
Far right in Europe is very very baad but the same thing in England is considered to be jolly civilised old chap
NR won over 31% of the vote in France. It as Macron’s party which only won 14%.
Macron has now called a parliamentary election.
I said 16% of total electorate. That is their real support in terms of actual people. The turnout was a very low 51.8%, something that has become a real problem in France in recent decades due to the way it became two party dominated.
A huge number of parties won votes here under PR, with 12 getting over 1% of those cast. In such instances, talking about ‘winners’ is really a bit meaningless. The strong left (communists, socialists) plus green parties got more votes combined than NR, just split multiple ways. Same for the centrists and liberals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_election_in_France#Results
NR were rejected by 7/10 on a low turnout, which is them overwhelmingly beaten, and that’s with them embracing the EU / free movement these days. Overall the result is a ringing endorsement of EU membership, but a public not happy with the traditional big domestic parties, causing low turnouts and fragmentation. By ceasing to be a far right anti-EU party, and becoming an economically centre right pro-EU party, NR has managed to grab some of the centre right vote.
Macron is not popular. Has gone from promising to a great disappointment. ‘Little Napoleon’ is what he’s being called by my French family. The centre to left an liberal are split wildly as noted. The right less so, congregating as they are around the new NR.
We’ll see in the national elections, but UKIP used to get votes in low turnout EU elections just like NR have. People don’t see much value in voting in EU elections apart from Eurosceptics. It’s what delivered us a UKIP MEP in Scotland even though every single region of Scotland went on to vote Remain.
Weird as it is, but Scotland wouldn’t be dragged out of the EU by the French National Rally if they were in power here in the UK. By contrast, Labour does keep Scotland out of the EU as it’s far more right-wing anti-migrant.
If NR are low in terms of the total electorate then all the other parties are half that or less. I think it’s best to stick to percentage of those who voted because it’s the people who turn up that determine the number of seats.
Is 52% turnout really low for an EU election? I seem to recall our turnouts were much lower for the EU.
no, it is higher than the last 30 years in France.
https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/
No, that’s the National Front. It was anti-EU and supported Frexit. Now it’s National Rally which is a pro-EU / free movement party so not comparable.
The move is like Reform completely changing to a position of backing re-entry to the EU, with free movement to boot.
National Front was pretty hard right. National Rally is centre right. Like New Labour but less extreme in it supports EU membership and is less anti-migrant.
turnout is up.
It is low. UK was really low because its voters were far more anti-EU.
In France, the pro-EU parties just swept the board, with National Rally one of these. Polls have never come close to ever suggesting France wants to end EU membership / free movement. It was a founder of the bloc.
Le Pen knew she could never get her party anywhere near power if it remained hard / far right anti-EU like her father’s party. This is historically socialist France after all.
So she embraced the EU with its full free movement and took advantage of the unpopularity of the old centre-right in France to form a new centre-right party. She’s losta lot of far right voters by doing this, but gained more centre-right conservatives.
This is an actual far right party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nationalists_(France)
Got 0.02%.
See Graham Kerr’s link. Turnout is highest since 1994.
51.8% is a low turnout. It may be on the higher side historically for this type of election, but it’s still low.
I can’t say that 52% is both high (France) and desperately low (UK) simultaneously. That’s nonsense speak. 🙂
74% is a high turnout. That’s what it was in the 2022 presidential election.
52% = low
74% = high
Unless you want to say
52% = high
74% = uber epic massive high
?
There has been a decline in turnouts across the board in France since the early 2000’s generally due to the issues I mentioned, particularly for the national assembly. My own French family have found themselves voting to stop parties / people the don’t want rather than for one they support, which is not healthy.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068866/participation-rate-voter-turnout-presidential-elections-france/
For the parliament.
1945-1986 = high
1988 to 2007 = med
2007 to date = low
2017 & 2022 (<50%) = very low
Clearly we can’t look at that graph and say a 52% turnout is even ‘high by French standards’. No, it’s low. It’s always low, even in France.
Stat of the day.
Over the course of May 2024, there was 1 full Scottish poll out every 2.75 days on average, with the longest gap in fieldwork an outlier 8 days. This coincided with the SNP at new low in apparent VI, with turnout projections hitting their lowest in recent history. Polling frequency in Scotland correlates with lower SNP; the lower the SNP, the more polls are published.
It’s now been 9 days since the last fieldwork was conducted by London’s ‘I heart Labour and can find enough Scots in 2 days when nobody else can’ Redfield & Wilton.
In addition to any silent SNP, it seems we now have silent pollsters, or at least silent press who publish such polls.
Maybe me saying this will tempt fate. 🙂
Today the BBC news has decided that Scotland cannot afford free tuition fees for universities anymore, this comes in the wake of SNP MP Stephen Flynn’s overwhelming success in the English/ British stitch up leaders debate in which virtually all of their candidates failed rather badly to impress the viewers
And so next day dawns as next day will to find poor Call Kaye proper ill as she has to mobilise the union voters to phone in using *experts* to insist the Scottish government cannot afford this bounty for our students anymore and money must be found from elsewhere or fees must be introduced
Now you see how they manipulate the system here, because nobody on the Call Kaye programme will just say we are where we are because the UK of Great Britain’s England forced Scotland into the Brexit we didn’t vote for, so the answer to tuition fees continuing as they are is independence for Scotland, then people can come and go and income can flow just like it did before England’s enforced union of far right nut jobs cut Scotland off from the world
They control the horizontal, the vertical and everything in between, they make rules that say we’re all size 9 shoes and medium sized clothing mousy hair and average height and go to the pub x times per week to buy warm beer and play skittles then wave wee union flags at the telly when the Royals come on
Get rid of England and we’re golden
Douglas Ross has resigned as Scottish Tory branch office. leader per BBC. Yessssssss best news I have had all week.😀
Correction -he is resigning after the GE per The National . Thankfully not many FMQs left before Scottish Parliament summer recess
Triffic best news indeed 👍
Och lol. He’s been stabbed by his own.
And this is a party the English panel pollsters say has the support of up to 20% of Scots, surging since the ‘demise’ of the SNP. 🙂
The National article on Douglas Ross resignation for those who don’t have access.
https://archive.ph/rTPXa
Or if you want the Graun:
Douglas Ross to resign as Scottish Tory leader after election | Scottish politics | The Guardian
On a side note to Ross allegedly resigning. If I remember correctly Capella you live in North East Scotland.
I am just curious about something in the BBC TV report about Ross resigning, David Duguid’s name was mentioned in a report from Fochabers but reporter there pronounced his surname like Dookit whereas teacher I had in school in Glasgow with the same surname it was pronounced like Dogood. I have an interest in how things are pronounced in different parts of Scotland. Is the way the reporter pronounced that surname common in your part of the country
I pronounce it Dyoo gid. NE born and bred and I think most people around here would pronounce it like that. I suppose the final d might be softened to t by some,
Thanks Capella
I pronounce it Do-guid (Do-gid) as in ‘guid man’, ‘guid dochter’. A hard ‘g’. I am from the Falkirk area originally. I found the way the reporters were pronouncing it very odd
”Douglas Ross resigns ” …kinda .
IF I am elected as MP I WILL step down from Holyrood …but IF I don’t win then I WILL continue as an MSP at Holyrood …but I will step down as Scottish Tory leader (sic ) because , if I don’t , I will be booted out for being DRoss ! And please don’t mention pockling expenses as I don’t do that … unless I did and wasn’t aware of that …just like I didn’t know that I owed HMRC back taxes on my 2nd ( 3rd ? ) job as a Linesman for the SFA ( SFA …appropriately describes my knowledge of integrity ) .
Aye! Douglas Ross will fully support the decision of Douglas Ross to slither in all directions at once, and has the full backing of Douglas Ross
I can see Jackson Carlaw coming up on the inside in one of his nicked Ford Escorts
The arrogance of Anas Sarwar and his bunch of new Tories has become staggering now, he’s already attempting to rewrite history before it’s even happened
Starwar today says “people in Scotland only voted for independence in Scotland in 2014 because they believed Labour could never win a general election”
This quite believable and typical Labour response to the electorate voiced by Sarwar is the reason people voted for independence for Scotland, because it matters naught whether Labour wins a general election in England and becomes the UK government because in five years time the Tories will be straight back in when England changes its mind AGAIN!
Scotland has sod all to do with which party is the UK government and never will under this rigged British system which will never change even after hell freezes over
England has 55 million people living in it, Scotland has 5.4 million, it’s simple arithmetic, are people that stupid? if England wants the Jungle Book party and a monkey on a stick as Prime Minister that is what will happen, so the temerity and arrogance of Sarwar to project his *people are too stupid to understand* propaganda crap is not only insulting it’s just an outright massive lie, which is exactly what the Labour party throughout its history has perpetuated
Too wee Too poor and Too stupid Scotland
For pity’s sake do not let this arrogant lying Labour twonk pull any kind of wool over anybody’s eyes
Labour win? sure! this year, five years from now? Tories again
There’s no damn difference occurring here
Vote Scotland, vote SNP to tell England we don’t want their politics , if we don’t? they’ll insist we love the UK by choosing one of their lot instead of our own
Someone show him this. In polls favouring Labour too!
“John Swinney defends SNP ditching ‘independence’ on the ballot paper“
Personally I thought it was a meaningless gimmick, and possibly even counterproductive if Alba, ISP, I4I, or the Greens also had for Independence on the ballot sheet – it could be confusing.
The SNP fund raising letter I got today, signed by John Swinney, says that “the SNP manifesto will say on page one, line one, a vote for the SNP is a vote for Scotland to become an independent country.” That was Humza Yousaf’s promise.
That’s good enough for me, and I guess other smaller parties will have independence on the ballot paper. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t know that the SNP stands for independence for Scotland?
the SNP manifesto will say on page one, line one, a vote for the SNP is a vote for Scotland to become an independent country.” That was Humza Yousaf’s promise.
That was what the SNP Conference voted to happen – they also voted for this
Conference further agrees that the SNP will seek to add the words “Independence for Scotland” or words to that effect, to the party’s name and logo on the General Election ballot papers to make it clear beyond doubt what’s at stake at this election.
If parties are going to cherry pick what parts of conference resolutions they are going to follow there is no real point of going through the song and dance of passing them? They may as well just let the party leadership make the decisions.
I understand that conference resolutions are not binding, they are advisory.
They may not represent the will of members given conference attendees are a tiny fraction of these.
It would certain be very unwise to consult all members via ballot then not do what they wanted. However, we can’t have the conference dictating policy, that would obviously be undemocratic.
They can debate issues and make suggestions to the leaders through resolutions, but is is Swinney is who members have charged with making the final calls on strategy. Yousaf made different calls, but he’s gone now. So it’s perfectly democratic for him to change course. No democratic vote has been undone as the resolution was not a democratic vote, just a conference show of hands.
I personally don’t have a particular issue with this. We are a world away from where we were just a few months ago. If Swinney is not going all out for a defacto iref, then it might be counterproductive to add it this time.
Better to wait for 2 years of a hated Labour government that Scots overwhelming rejected in power, then do it. Demographics alone mean the UK is absolutely screwed in 2 years anyway. Swinney will be perfectly aware of this, even he’s cautious about the election due to the mixed polling messages (him way out in front leadership wise and Yes in majority, yet Labour supposedly making big seat gains on a really low turnout).
I understand that conference resolutions are not binding, they are advisory.
They may not represent the will of members given conference attendees are a tiny fraction of these.
It would certain be very unwise to consult all members via ballot then not do what they wanted. However, we can’t have the conference dictating policy, that would obviously be undemocratic.
I agree as I said in my first post – there is no point in having them, the resolutions are not worth the paper they are written on and they are undemocratic – all they are is expensive eco chambers. (This goes for all parties not just the SNP)
Resolutions are not undemocratic. They’d only be so if they were dictatorial rather than simply advisory as they are. The fact that Swinney does not need to abide by conference resolutions means they are not undemocratic.
I personally think they are useful and interesting debates to have for enthusiastic attendees, but as noted, are not and should not be binding, just informative as they are.
What with Sunak and DDay and Ross over expenses and Duguid it seems the Tories are hell bent on crashing their electoral clown car come hell or highwater. Can’t ever recall such a weird campaign… OK May’s was pretty weird but that was primarily because she was uncomfortable in people situations rather than making actual terrible decisions.
We could have a brand new political party who has “Everybody gets free ice cream champagne and cake” as their top line manifesto promise but has no intention or even desire to put that into effect because they know they can never win an election
Lots of parties promise lots of stuff in the full and certain knowledge they’ll never have to deliver any of it, but they know their faithful followers will run all over the internet squealing at the tops of their wee unimportant unnoticed voices as though they would’ve if they could’ve, and later when they fail it becomes they should’ve
If promises of delivery of nice things were ever meant to be true, the Liberal Democrats would rule the world and Alex Salmond would be the proudest advert for Weight watchers
*Ditching* is such a newspaper tabloid word innit
I stand for not drinking media Kool aid, do I need to write it down and say it every day for anybody who doesn’t already know that?
Today’s UK turnout project is 51.4%, up 0.5% on GE announcement.
If this happened, it would be the lowest turnout in the history of the UK, and hand Labour the same popular mandate as they got in their ‘worst defeat since 1935’ in 2019. Labour would win, but lose at the same time.
The alterative is that it does rise, but the closer this happens to voting day the more difficult it will be for pollsters to predict the outcome. If we are like 1997, Labour could come out 10% lower without this being ever seen in polls. What if England has silent voters too? It’s not something I’ve looked into and don’t plan to, but it has had these before in 1997 and 2015. On both occasions Labour were being oversampled.
As things stand I have them on 22.4% of the total electorate, up 0.8% on 2019. That’s down 0.5% from a peak on the 29th of May.
Englishman wishes English team the best for the Euros.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c3gg1vzdx98o
Prince William meets England’s Euro 2024 squad
So I read that the Tory vermin that infests Scotland is no different to the Labour vermin when it comes to parachuting their chosen candidates into Scotland from London, and now this includes the DRoss replacement for his MSP job if or whenever he decides his time’s up
This latest intrusion into Scotland’s politics is some £six figured London based female executive who’s mother was involved in an illegally run charity investigation, ach what does it matter, in short another crooked Tory or Labour, they’re all the same, just shunted up to Scotland to keep their union alive and their boot on Scotland’s neck, and once again we’ll all just mumble about it instead of doing what we need to do
Isn’t it time we smashed the door down instead of constantly asking for the key?