Andrew Tickell

1 week ago | thenational.scot | Andrew Tickell

The ructions have been manifold and varied. We’ve had three successive First Ministers, the pall of the Salmond affair, the gloom and uncertainty of Operation Branchform, policy controversy and sunken flagships, and a succession of high-cost legal battles. In a party known for its message discipline and internal solidarity, we’ve seen the spilling out of internal disputes into the public domain and perceptions of party factionalism feeding the same.

2 weeks ago | thenational.scot | Andrew Tickell

Did you know that large language models like ChatGPT are in the habit of embedding random but superficially plausible falsehoods into the answers they generate? These are your hallucinations. Facts are made up. Counterfeit sources are invented. Real people are conflated with one another. Real-world sources are garbled. Quotations are falsified and attributed to authors who either don’t exist, or didn’t express any of the sentiments attributed to them.

3 weeks ago | thenational.scot | Andrew Tickell

Labour currently hold 50 of Scotland’s 72 seats in the House of Commons and are growing to dislike the moniker the “feeble fifty”. Devolution is still 10 years off, Neil Kinnock is still failing rightwards in the forlorn search for the centre ground, the poll tax is poised to roll out across Scotland and Mrs Thatcher has no notion she is entering her final years in Downing Street.

1 month ago | thenational.scot | Andrew Tickell

Tony Blair, disturbingly, seemed to believe everything he said. Liz Truss was mad but apparently sincere. Others like Ruth Davidson have been essentially hollow – unencumbered with ideological freight or by too many undisposable convictions, living on their wit and by their wits, but so basically unanchored in specific ideas about how the country should be governed that speaking out of both sides of their mouth was a necessary requirement to get through the political week.

1 month ago | thenational.scot | Andrew Tickell

For the barest of bare majorities, the magic number is 65. It turns out bladders aren’t always reliable. An expression of palpable relief washed across the face of the MSP for Orkney as the Presiding Officer announced that the motion had carried 70 votes to 56 – and understandably so. If MSPs had rejected the general principles of the bill, the proposal would have fallen.