🗣 @Ianblackford_MP: “Mr Speaker, this afternoon, millions around the world will breathe a massive sigh of relief when President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn into office.” #PMQs

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "I want to update Parliament on Cabinet's review of the current lockdown restrictions, which took place earlier today."

NS: "I will report on some cautious grounds for optimism, I'm pleased to say, but also set out why it is vital, in order to protect the NHS and save lives, to stick with these restrictions for a further period."

NS: "I will set out what that means for the timing of getting children back to school, which, of course, remains a priority for all of us."

NS: "And finally, I'll touch on other aspects of our response to Covid, including control of borders, the further expansion of testing, and the progress of the vaccination programme."

NS: "Firstly, I'll give a brief summary of the latest statistics and then seek to put these in some context."

📺 Watch @Ianblackford_MP and your SNP MPs at #PMQs as they hold Boris Johnson and the Tories to account on their reckless Brexit obsession.

⏰ Tune in now: https://t.co/RlaW0Pb2tx

.@Ianblackford_MP: “Mr Speaker, In the last few hours, the President of the European Commission said that the ‘next few days are going to be decisive’ in the Brexit negotiations.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “With just two weeks to go, it is a disgrace that businesses and people have been left with this crippling uncertainty and the real threat of food and medicine shortages ahead of the new year.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “One year ago, at the general election, Scotland rejected this Prime Minister, rejected this Tory Government and rejected their extreme Brexit.
 
People in Scotland now need to know the price they will be forced to pay.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “Ahead of any vote in Parliament, will the Prime Minister commit to releasing a detailed economic impact assessment of the cost to the UK of his extreme Tory Brexit plans?”

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "I want to update Parliament on Cabinet’s review of the current lockdown restrictions which took place this morning."

NS: "Let me confirm at the outset that - with one limited exception - I will not be announcing any immediate changes to the current lockdown restrictions."

NS: "The core stay at home requirement will remain in place until at least the beginning of March - and possibly for a further period beyond that although not for any longer than is absolutely necessary."

NS: "I will however confirm that the phased and gradual return to school that I said we were hopeful about when I updated Parliament two weeks ago will go ahead as planned from Monday."

NS: "I will say more about this - and about the importance of carefully implementing and monitoring it - later.

In addition, I will give an assessment of the current state of the pandemic."

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "I will give a short update on today's figures. 1,656 positive cases were reported yesterday, which is 7.5% of all tests carried out. The total number of cases therefore is now 166,583."

NS: "As of yesterday, 309,909 people had received their first dose of vaccine. There are currently 2,003 people in hospital, which is 14 more than yesterday, and 156 people in intensive care, which is 6 more than yesterday."

NS: "I very much regret to report that, in the past 24 hours, a further 92 deaths were registered of patients who first tested positive over the previous 28 days and the total number of people who have died under that daily measurement is 5,468."

NS: "National Records of Scotland has also just published its weekly update. That, of course, includes cases where Covid is a suspected or contributory cause of death, even if it hasn't been confirmed through a test."

NS: "Today's update shows that, by last Sunday, the total number of registered deaths linked to Covid under the wider definition was 7,448. 368 of those deaths were registered in the most recent week, which is 23 fewer than in the week before that."

🛫 As Boris Johnson sets off on his jaunt to Scotland, he'd hope people forget his catalogue of broken promises.

🔎 We thought we'd remind him.

👀 Their latest attack on workers' rights is only the most recent example of why you can't trust the

There's hardly enough space in an article to contain what Boris Johnson thinks of Scotland, devolution, Scottish spending, and the NHS... so here's a thread 👇

1⃣ Just a few months ago, Boris Johnson said devolution is "a disaster".

2⃣ While Boris Johnson seemingly liked devolution as Mayor of London, he told Tory MPs he did not "currently see a case" for devolving more powers from Westminster to Scotland and other nations.

3⃣ Boris Johnson's Leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, recently said that devolution amounted to "vandalism" and must be

4⃣ In 2007, nearly a decade after the Scottish Parliament was re-convened - Boris Johnson's current Secretary of Scotland, Alister Jack, indicated he was opposed to devolution and the Scottish Parliament.

NEW: @SidneyPowell1 in radio interview w/ @toddeherman when asked what her "Elevator Pitch" to the Supreme Court would be "The very night of the election many people saw something that they had never seen before in the history of our elections. They saw votes being changed on

2/ the screen in front of them, going from President @realDonaldTrump to @JoeBiden. On top of that, the morning after the election, even that night, the voting stopped. They stopped counting in multiple districts at the same time before the vote got to 270 electors for President

3/ Trump. That's never happened before. The only time votes have ever stopped being counted in this country on election night was when the Broward County problem developed over the Hanging Chad's in one county in FL. So for FIVE states to stop counting on election night is

4/ absolutely UNPRECEDENTED. And they did it because the vote count for the electoral college was about to hit [+ go over] 270 for President @realDonaldTrump, because of the massive outpouring of votes for him that night. By the next morning, multiple mathematicians had contacted

5/ me and told me they knew the algorithm that had been run to change the votes. It was that obvious to people with mathematical expertise. It is a mathematical impossibility for 100's of thousands of votes to show up for VP Biden alone, and to have been injected into the system

The U.S. national security and intelligence apparatus has said for years that climate change is the single greatest threat to the nation and world. While systems intrusion and hacking by foreign actors could potentially have replicated some of what happened in Texas, it didn't.

Climate change and failure to plan did that, along with incompetence, ineptitude, and sheer greed.

Not only was what happened in Texas the failure of governance and malfeasance, it was a complete failure of imagination, vision, and insight.

While some folks want to call it a "black swan event," the fact is what happened in Texas was not. Not only was it anticipated, it was predicted. The people in charge were told what the problems were, how to fix them and why. They were told what to expect if they didn't.

Not only was it a cyclical occurrence (the third time in just over 30 years), both the periodicity and severity are increasing and intensifying. Therefore, the choices for inaction paved the way for the occurrence. It was inevitable.

In this regard, conservative ideology, philosophy and fiscal beliefs are their own worse enemy. That's because conservatism's most natural response is at best to do nothing, at worst to resist. Therefore, the disaster was a multi-layered, time induced, mountain of self-sabotage.