Lord Dunderheid

Over the weekend following the Holyrood elections, a friend sent me a text saying that the word he had heard most, regarding the low turnout, was "scunnered". I've since heard/read that the turnout was only low compared to the 2021 election but, at the same time, I definitely get a sense that many people, particularly previous Labour and SNP voters, were indeed scunnered. I think that those scunnered with the SNP were not scunnered for the same reasons as those who were scunnered with Labour. Those feeling that way towards Labour, I'd guess, felt this way because of the performance of Starmer and Reeves over the past two years (after thinking they'd reached the promised land politically speaking). Those previous SNP voters (who maybe didn’t vote or voted for another party) were, I think, scunnered for a range of reasons. I’ve listed as many of those reasons as I can think of at the foot of this post (just so no-one feels forced to read all of it here). However,...

We are now a couple of months into the US and Israeli bombing attacks on Iran (leaving aside for now Israel's attacks on Lebanon and the various Palestinian armed groups) - and there is still no resolution. Every day or so, Trump indicates that the war is going according to plan and that Iran is about to submit to all the US demands. This is quickly followed by Iran denying that they are even considering the US proposals as they cross various red lines that are not possible to accept. Meanwhile the economies of just about all countries around the world continue to suffer with oil prices through the roof along with other products like fertilisers. A couple of things to say, here. Firstly, I think the attacks on Iran were wrong - but, from their point of view, I do understand why the US and Israel decided to go down that road. It is quite clear that Iran has been bankrolling various armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah - and Israel would clearly like that to stop. In addition to th...