Maximising the Vote

Whoever wins the current season of Loathe Island... sorry, the Tory leadership contest, will no doubt be asked by Nicola Sturgeon if they will authorise a Section 30 order for a second independence referendum. They will, just as inevitably, say "no". Later this year, the Supreme Court are going to rule on whether the Scottish Parliament can hold such a referendum without such an order (and, in effect, whether Scotland is a voluntary member of a union, or an imprisoned colony in the English Empire). The expectation is that they will also say "no".

At which point the next General Election becomes a de facto referendum.

Now, in order to 'win' such a contest, the pro-independence side will require two things:

• A majority of the votes cast.
• The overwhelming majority of Scotland's seats - ideally, all 59, but certainly more than the 48 currently held.

In order to achieve these, the best approach is for the "yes" camp to get behind a single candidate in every seat, to maximise the vote for that candidate. And, since they enjoy by far the strongest name recognition (and since this will, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as their initiative), that candidate should be SNP.

Which is absolutely fine in 56 of the constituencies, where the SNP are either the incumbent or the strongest pro-independence opposition. But there are 2 seats currently held by Alba and one by a (formerly-SNP) independent.

Now, in a normal election, what would happen is that they'd stand for re-election, the SNP would put up candidates, the SNP would win the seats, and the three individuals would be out of politics for a while. No big deal.

But in a de facto referendum, that represents a big risk. Firstly, it's just possible that the split vote will allow a unionist to sneak in, cutting the number of seats down a tad. More importantly, the votes that go to the losing Alba/independent candidate will inevitably not be added to the SNP total, and so will be 'lost' to the pro-independence cause.

Which kind of sucks for the individuals involved, but they're going to have to ask themselves: just how much do they really value independence? Will they stand down for the good of the cause?

Highs and Lows of the Weekend

It has been an eventful weekend...

Low! Surprise! is going through a phase where he has decided that he loves Mummy but hates Daddy. Frustrating for LC; soul-destroying for me.

High! I was at a band event on Saturday. When I got there I discovered that, once again, some fool had left me in charge. It went well.

High! LC went out for the evening on Saturday, and once Surprise! got used to the idea he realised that actually it's not so bad. Things got a bit tense around 10.30 when he woke up again and had to come to terms with the fact that Mummy simply wasn't there, but eventually he was persuaded to have a drink of water and go back to sleep.

Low! No sleep on Saturday night - LC returned home after midnight, Surprise! work us up just after 5.

Low! I had volunteered to do the reading in church this week, which would have been fine except that the Old Testament reading was Hosea 1 - the uplifting tale of how our hero was instructed to name his children Unloved and NotMine. Cheery stuff, that hits rather differently now than it did a few years ago.

High! A nice visit to Almond Valley in the afternoon. Fun in the sun, ice creams, and a little bit of a rest.

High! WIld boar for dinner. See my previous post.

High! Surprise! seems to have realised he doesn't hate Daddy after all.

Low! But he has gunky eyes and a fever.

Low! And now it's Monday.

Experimental Cookery 2022: Sticky BBQ'd Wild Boar Loin Steaks

For my birthday BBQ this year we once again bought a box of stuff from the Wild Meat Company. In the event, a lot of it went unused, and so we're now gradually working through the leftovers. This time out was the wild boar loin steaks.

There isn't really anything to say about the preparation or the meal here - it was a very quick marinade followed by a quick cook on the griddle (would have been the BBQ, but too much hassle just for this). Really, the experimental cookery is about the meat.

And it was fine. Both LC and I kind of liked it, but neither of us was utterly blown away. Given the cost of wild boar relative to other meats, this is therefore not something we'll have again except as an incidental (if we make another combined order and end up with these left). Which is fine.

One thing that I did find interesting was that the boar was left very slightly rare (which is apparently fine with boar, unlike pork). This wasn't something that I would normally have done, and indeed even with duck is something I have studiously avoided. But it was fairly apparent, at least in this case, that it was the way to go - the meat was left softer as a result, which made for better eating. Maybe one day we'll try duck again and apply the same lesson.

Oh, and also a disaster: we should have used our steak knives! They so rarely get called upon, and this would have been a good chance. Oh well.

Gala Day Season

One of the many things that was cancelled during the pandemic, and that has now resumed to a certain extent, is Gala Day season. For the uninitiated these are local celebrations largely intended to drum up some community spirit. Over the years they have waxed and waned in popularity, though they do seem much stronger in the middle of Scotland than further West - there were a good number when we lived in Falkirk, and there seem to be more now we live in Livingston.

Following the pandemic, the Gala Days appear to fall into three camps: about a third seem simply to be 'done' (they haven't happened this year and look unlikely to resume); about a third are still on hiatus but expected to return next year; and about a third have been back.

My band have attended three Gala Days so far this year (Mid Calder, Uphall Station, and Polbeth), and are attending another not-Gala Day on Saturday. We then have one in Broxburn later in the year.

All in all, this has been a fairly successful, if rather light, year - we usually do a few more galas than this, but on the other hand it was no bad thing to ease back in gently. Plus, the Gala Days that we have attended have gone pretty well (at least for our part!), and in particular Mid Calder was not the disaster I feared it might have been, given that we'd been away for nearly three years by that point.

Oh, No...

I don't particularly care for Rishi Sunak, for a variety of reasons, but I wouldn't have a problem with him as PM - if nothing else, he's a fairly serious person with some reasonable sense. Alas, I don't think he's going to get the job.

I likewise don't like Penny Mordant, and in particular I didn't like her penchant for lying (especially over the Turkey veto) - after Boris, the last thing we need is another Prime Liar. But, again, she was a fairly serious person, and I wouldn't have had a problem with her as PM.

But the prospect of Liz Truss as PM terrifies me. Not because I think she's particularly malevolent; indeed, of the three she's probably the least troublesome in that regard. But, alas, I think she's a blithering idiot. She's basically the Dougal McGuire of politics - she's nice and inoffensive enough, but liable to burn the whole place down by accident.

And she's probably our next PM. Looks like Theresa May will soon have serious competition for her title of second-worst PM of all time record.

Day 200: Update on Goals

Shockingly, it's day 200 of the year already. So, time for another update on goals:

• Books: As I noted a few weeks ago, I'm now hopelessly behind on my reading - I've completed only 20 books, and have read essentially nothing in all of July. I won't be hitting the 60 book target, or anything close to it, and the jury is out on whether I'll finish The List this year - there are four books to go, which shouldn't be impossible but is looking increasingly tight.
• Weight: The update here is devastating - shortly after returning to the office I lost a fair bit of weight, only for it all to come piling back on. I don't even know what happened there; I dropped weight because I essentially stopped snacking, but I didn't start again prior to it coming back. Sigh.
• Blogging: By day 200 I should have written 65.75 posts here. That puts me 7 behind target. As with the reading, I've largely skipped all of July so far, but am gradually picking up the slack again. I've posted 30 times on the Imaginarium, and again haven't posted in July.
• Redecorating the Hallway: We've concluded that we're not able to do the decorating ourselves this time - stripping the wallpaper from above the stairs is a tougher job than we can manage. So the intent is to get someone in to do it for us this time, with the expectation that we will be able to repaint it in future.
• Super Secret Goal: I said last time that I'd be in a position to make a definitive decision on this by now... and I still can't. That's frustrating, to say the least. I think the answer to that is that I'm going to have to spend some time exploring my options, and then see where things go. (There's more to say on this one, much more, but it's a topic I don't blog about.)

And that's the update. It's a poor one this time, filled with setbacks and frustrations. Which is about right.

Service Not Included

I don't carry cash these days - with the rise of contactless I have taken to using my card for even very small payments, and with the pandemic the use of cash has fallen massively out of favour in general. This occasionally causes problems with things like paying for parking, though I mostly deal with that through the medium of being prepared (that is, I take coins with me when I know I'm going to need them).

Unfortunately, this left me in a moral bind last week - LC and I went out to dinner, we had a great time, and then the bill came. "Service not included" was printed on the receipt, and there was no option to add a tip at the card machine.

Which sucked. It was a good meal, and those who produced it deserved some recognition of their work. But I can't give a tip in cash if I don't have any cash, obviously.

There are, of course, solutions to this. The best is actually to abolish tipping - it's radical, but restaurants could actually pay their staff appropriately and set their prices to match. Failing that, the ability to add a tip at the paypoint could be made available as standard. And failing even that, add a contactless point somewhere in the restaurant for electronic tipping.

In the meantime, it's tricky. Ultimately, I couldn't give a tip with cash I didn't have, I felt bad about it, but there it is.