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Leaving the UK would mean having the option to stay in the EU (which the majority of that country wanted anyway), so supporting independence may be more a pragmatic choice for some Scots these days than an emotional one.  Or am I way off the mark?

Plus, of course, being in the EU and not having to go through the process of applying to join as an independent nation was sold as one of the key advantages of staying in the union.

I don't know for sure, but they've always looked a lot like Dave Gibbons did 'em to my eye.

I can't see how Scottish nationalism is different from any other kind of nationalism

Except in the way I described, presumably? The SNP positions itself as internationalist and inclusive — it's pro-EU membership and pro-immigration, exactly the opposite of the nationalism peddled by Johnson, Farage and Trump. Hence my suggestion that it's not reasonable to lump them all together. Their position is for independence from the UK but in the context of EU membership, rather than the isolationist dreams of empire the Tories, Brexit Party and UKIP have traded on.

If, by 'nationalism', you mean what Johnson, Farage and Trump are all selling then perhaps it's not right to call the SNP a 'nationalist' party at all, since the term, when applied to their aspirations for an independent Scotland, seems to mean something entirely different.

Nationalism I suspect has been the winner here, both in England and Scotland.

You keep using "nationalism" like this in relation to the SNP, but their platform is determinedly internationalist, rather than the isolationist nationalism peddled by the likes of Johnson, Farage and Trump.

I truly hope that this sort of disgusting nationalistic fervour soon dies down.  I just don't know.

Of course it won't. It just won the Tories a landslide — they're not putting this back in its box when it works so well for them.

Yep.

great stuff, would be wonderful to see you do the Norse sagas...

You can lead a Norse to water...

To the best of my knowledge the only famous graduate from my university. I think that now makes me the most famous of their alumni.* I absolutely did not do in David Bellamy for that reason.

I had other reasons.

* Which tells you more or less everything you need to know about how shit my university was.

I came across a thread on Twitter a few days ago where people were sharing their experiences of US healthcare — specifically, in this case, people who'd had quite serious surgical procedures under local anesthetic because having a general meant an overnight stay in hospital which they couldn't afford. One person described actually watching surgeons open up his abdomen and how much pain you can still feel under a local.

Apparently, in US healthcare, this is Very Much A Thing (to the extent that there's a NY Times article about it that I won't bother linking because it's behind a paywall).

One doctor rightly described the whole thing as 'uncivilised' saying that in this day and age, we shouldn't just be giving people "something to bite down on" during surgery.

A shame there are people who will still vote for him. Surely in any decent Society that would be the end of him, and his awful party.

How many times have those words been typed about Donald Trump in the last three years. Every time it doesn't happen, the limit for what is 'acceptable' shifts still further and ever-more-despicable behaviour becomes normalised.

The only way back from this is for both the Republicans in the US and the Tories here to be destroyed electorally... and I don't see that happening, since the underlying thrust of their strategies is to rig the political system to make it impossible to get the fuckers out.

And then the Tories concoct a complete lie about Matt Hancock's advisor being assaulted outside the Leeds hospital in question to distract from Johnson's PR disaster, which is uncritically retweeted by both Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston despite there being actual video of the supposed incident clearly showing that no part of what "senior Tories" were claiming was true.

Ahhh, man... Rene Auberjonois.

ABut it's not a journey any of them can make without caring for the others – and to do that, they have to embrace both their own absurdity and that of their friends. To me, that's where the warmth and whimsy are.

And in Danny, obviously.

Yeah. I find Doom Patrol one of Morrison's warmest works. There's so much stuff going on between these characters — in a bizarre way, it's not a million miles from the dynamic that made Claremont's X-Men work. I also love the fact that when most of the mainstream comic industry was rushing headlong to embrace the DKR/Watchmen model of angsty grimdark, Morrison was tripping his tits off on magic mushrooms and antihistamines on a Glasgow hillside and bringing us... this.

For the first time in several weeks, my prog arrived on Saturday, as is right and proper. I don't think the issues can have been related to the printing of the prog, simply because it's been arriving on the high street shelves on time (I assume?).

I suspect we have to point the finger at the postal service, which seems to have been struggling generally if the arrival of stuff I've ordered online over the last few weeks is anything to go by.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, DIGITAL SCUM!