Dead Cat Bouncing
We know the meanings of words are very flexible these days, especially in the SNP.
But this isn’t our understanding of the term “turning around”:
Jings, readers, after some extremely quiet weeks in Scottish politics, rather a lot has happened in the last 24 hours and we’re racing to catch up.
So let’s see where we are.
The poll story is ostensibly the least interesting, as it just continues a trend that’s been going on for the whole of 2023 (see the graph up at the top of this page). But as it happens, last night we also noticed a detail we’d previously missed, which confirmed something we’ve been saying for a while but had no solid data for until now.
All year we’ve detected no enthusiasm whatsoever for Scottish Labour among the Scottish electorate, even as they’ve closed the gap on the SNP from 26 points to just two. (Understandably, since they’ve done absolutely nothing discernible to generate any, apart from just not being the SNP.)
And sure enough, Survation’s polling in June found out that the majority of Labour’s gains in Scotland have come from the other Unionist parties, picking up 25% of 2019 Lib Dem voters and 20% of 2019 Tory voters.
(It also rather undermines Cllr Campbell-Sturgess’ claim that Scottish voters are now beginning to see through Labour as an alternative to the Tories. In fact in “the last 12 months or so” Labour’s lead over the Tories in Scotland has increased from just three points to 19, which backs up the Survation findings.)
But that’s not even the bit of that Survation graphic that should be terrifying the SNP. Look at those “strength of party identity” figures. We don’t remember EVER seeing ANY party record a net minus rating of its strength among its own supporters. The Tories are in a truly spectacular hole at the moment but their own supporters still have a +70 positive rating of their party’s strength, compared to SNP voters’ -3.
What that stat translates to in the real world is that when an election comes around, a party’s voters don’t, in the main, go out and vote for anyone else. They just stay at home, scunnered, feeling they have nobody they’re willing to endorse.
This, alert viewers will recall, is what happened in 2017. The SNP shed 476,876 voters in that Westminster election compared to the previous one, but the Unionist parties only gained 293,098 between them (of which, staggeringly, only 10,000 went to Labour even though it had held 41 Scottish seats just two years earlier).
(At least) 200,000 SNP voters just skipped the election entirely, and although the party lost 21 of its 56 seats, it was only a few thousand votes from losing very many more as its huge majorities melted away to nothing.
If the same thing happens next year, the election will go a lot worse for the SNP than the polls are currently predicting, because Labour’s voters will be motivated to turn out and the SNP’s won’t and it’s a First Past The Post election. A total wipeout like Scottish Labour suffered in 2015 will be a very real possibility.
The SNP’s great good fortune is that Scottish Labour is led by people with the IQ of a chewed shoe. If Labour had done ANYTHING to actually give SNP voters an excuse to switch to them, they’d be streaking out of sight by now.
But soon even the complete rank ineptitude of Anas Sarwar and his clueless gaggle of Union-Jack-bedecked halfwits won’t be enough to stop Labour winning seats as they simply sit still and watch the SNP vote plummet past them.
The SNP election campaign, of course, won’t be helped by the fact that the party’s currently as poor as a church mouse that’s just had to install a heat pump in a draughty cathedral. The large loss in its 2022 accounts, published today, is a remarkable one, because for as long as anyone can remember the SNP has lost money in general-election years and made profits in non-general-election years.
2022 was the latter, and so should have seen a healthy surplus. But the bizarre statement attached to the accounts really made our ears prick up.
The only “nation-wide elections” that took place in 2022 were the council ones, which quite simply don’t count in this context. Spending on them is a tiny fraction of what it is on a general election, so much so that there are no official records held by the Electoral Commission for council-election spending like there are for Westminster or Holyrood votes.
But when we tried to investigate further, we discovered something REALLY strange.
Because the last year there were council elections in Scotland before 2022 was 2017, which of course was also a UK general election year (albeit an unscheduled one). And according to the EC, the SNP declared spending of £1.6 million specifically for that UK election.
That’s pretty much the party’s standard outlay on a UK election. But it means that if we check the SNP’s accounts for 2017 and subtract that figure from their total spending on campaigning, we should get a decent rough idea of what they spent on the council elections the same year.
Wait, what? They spent £1.6m on the UK election alone, but their TOTAL campaigning expenditure for the UK election AND the Scottish council election was only £1.5m? So the spend for the council election was MINUS £100,000? They made a profit on it?
We know that the veracity of the SNP’s accounts going back as far as 2015 is currently under a massive cloud in general.
But this is a remarkable anomaly even in those circumstances, and offhand we can’t even begin to think of an explanation for it.
What we do know from speaking to former SNP councillors is that party funding for council election campaigning is extremely minimal, verging on non-existent. Would-be councillors have to raise most or all of their expenditure themselves or via their local branch, rather than being financed by the central party. But that just makes the note on this year’s accounts trying to blame the council elections for the financial losses all the more suspect.
Talking of suspect things, we’re now of course severely restricted by law in what we can say about the “Referendum Appeal Fund”, which is why the Herald’s piece on it is so short. But we all remember the number of times the SNP leadership has insisted that the Fund is not missing and is still available for spending at a moment’s notice.
But if the UK government was to suddenly turn round and say “Okay, you know what, you CAN have your referendum on 19 October this year, fire away”, it’s awfully hard to see in the SNP’s accounts the place from where that money would be produced.
The party has just £46,000 in the bank and an overall reserve of MINUS £220,000. In order to have £487,000 available to spend on a referendum (the amount the 2021 accounts claimed was still in the Fund), the SNP would therefore have to somehow find over £707,000 down the back of a sofa that its accountants don’t know about.
(We’re still not at all clear how £253,335 can supposedly have been spent from a “ringfenced” fund for a referendum when that referendum hasn’t happened, has never been going to happen and which even the SNP now admit isn’t going to happen. What was it spent ON, exactly? What is there to show for this quarter of a million pounds? Nobody will say.)
The party is in dire financial straits, with membership and donations both in freefall, so it’d be a brave bank that loaned them that sort of money. (Let’s remember that it took them six months just to get someone to agree to do their accounts.) And let’s just leave that there, before our lawyers get nervous.
Which just leaves the bewildering, membership-trolling appointment of Murray Foote to try to get our heads round. Some of the SNP’s zoomier supporters have been claiming on social media that this is a genius move because as a No-to-Yes convert Foote will understand the people we need to win round.
And the National’s tiny-brained new star SNP columnist Kelly Given claimed in this morning’s edition of the sort-of newspaper – in what was a remarkably swiftly-written article, considering that the SNP NEC were only told of the appointment yesterday afternoon, five minutes before the press were informed – that Foote had been “committed to the Union in 2014″.
The only problem with that theory is that it’s complete hogwash. According to Foote himself, he was NEVER a No.
Nor is this a retconning of his views to suit his new employer. His leanings were known about at least as far back as March 2014.
So what we’re being asked to believe of the SNP’s new Chief Executive is that he always believed in independence, so when a referendum suddenly became a reality and he found himself in the position of being editor of the country’s second-biggest newspaper at the time, he chose NOT to use that influence to try to help bring independence about, but instead was central to the creation of a pivotal front page that gave waverers an excuse to vote No and tell themselves it’d still bring about most of the benefits of what Foote’s newspaper called “separation”, with none of the dangers.
We have no idea what job experience of trying to secure independence Murray Foote will be bringing to the SNP. The only time he had a chance to do that when it actually mattered, he bottled it, while pouring abuse on people who were actually in the trenches fighting the fight he was shirking.
(Wings, of course, had at no point said anything whatsoever that was either “vicious” or a “falsehood” about Suzanne Hunter.)
But maybe that’s not what he’s been hired for. A natural devolutionist like Foote will fit right in with the modern devolutionist SNP. And perhaps more pertinently, he has a demonstrated ability to magic billions of pounds into existence from thin air.
And that, at least, is something the SNP could definitely use right now.
Can confirm about Council Election spending. I paid for leaflets etc out of my own pocket. I’d even to buy the f’kin rosette!
Scottish Labour is led by people with the IQ of a chewed shoe
Classic!
Rev. your work rate is just astonishing.
Assume the double negative “at no point said nothing whatsoever” should read ANYthing?!
John I pray to god you’ve now seen the light and aren’t going to throw your hard earned money away on the SNP they’ll never do anything for Scotland no even with Forbes in charge.
John Bell says:
24 August, 2023 at 1:38 pm
Can confirm about Council Election spending. I paid for leaflets etc out of my own pocket. I’d even to buy the f’kin rosette!
I hope you can also look into who appointed Foote as CEO. The NEC was “informed” of the decision. Who the heck has the power to make this call?
Said for years, the SNP was infiltrated by MI5. right at the core of the leadership.
Sturgeon was compromised, and blackmailed for years. the brit secret service cashed in its prize cow when it mattered.
I hope everyone of these SNP MPs MSPs and councilors realize the legacy of treachery they leave behind. Their names are dirt and will be remembered as such!
Leaving aside the possibility of a complete meltdown for the SNP at GE 2024 (which is a real possibility given the “meh, not so much” levels of enthusiasm from potential SNP voters), what would the latest forecast (Survation 15 – 18 Aug) mean for finances?
Loss of MPs: 24
Loss of vote: 37% (from 45% in 2019)
Short money loss = £466k for MPs and £336k for votes. Total £802k.
Then there’s lost tithes from MPs = £72k.
Total forecast revenue reduction for 2024 = £847k.
This is on top of an existing £800k debt, the requirement to raise a war chest for an impending GE and a new CEO reportedly hired on £100k pa.
NuSNP are the Enron of politics.
I still think the campervan / 600K is the tip of the iceberg; the “tell” was this – they were losing members and didn’t give a fuck; but why? If you are funded by your members, this is disastrous. If the SNP is not funded by members then it is funded elsewhere. I think there is some, maybe more than one, source of dark money, a slush fund which is keeping it all running. Once you have something like that the problem is then how to funnel the money in legitimately, but there are experts who know this.
– the trans lobby has incredible amounts of money behind it, the pritzker billionaires
– then there is one closer to home, which people won’t talk about for fear of racism; the “asian mercantile class” primarily based in south Glasgow has done very well for itself – they are a bit shady though with an inbuilt spiv mentality … (OHNOHESBEINGARACIALIST, cover your ears) … sorry, “it is what it is”. Of late, there have been quite a few cases of “asian businessman” being very forgetful of their VAT receipts (a relatively easy and lucrative form of fraud), this is what the “asian business miracle” consists of, though it can also be a bit unlucky with fires at cash-and-carrys …
the SNP courted the asian business class openly and now they have “their guy” in the top seat and what is more – backing all the horses – another of their guys as his main rival.
Businessman do not ever give money away for free – it is always an “investment” – it has to pay off, down the line. Always. Maybe this was it.
The “how” of this hypothetical slush fund, I have no idea – cryptcurrencies? foreign property? physical gold – asians are into that … amazon gift cards.
It could be even weirder – the SNP might be funded directly by the ukgov/spooks; there is precedent – MI6 once ran in egypt a virulently anti-british pro-arab nationalist radio station (the idea was to “divert the discourse” at some critical moment) and people were alarmed by its content and suggested it be shutdown. The answer was no, for a telling reason – “its the only one of our operations which MAKES ANY MONEY”.
I seem to remember Stuart Campbell had the SNP sized-up years before any other journalist. Hr predicted that Sturgeon would be gone at the end of the Fabiani Inquiry and he got that wrong and it took longer to do that. But, it was inevitable.
I suspect that what he says about the Labour Party is bang on the money. The latest iteration of that Party is even more putrid than the iterations that went before it and anyone that votes Labour will live to regret it.
Who knows what the future holds for Holyrood.
Some SNP loyalists on other sites have said Foote’s appointment is potentially a good thing for the SNP and independence because he’s an experienced journalist who might have the dirt on unionist politicians and can use that to the SNP’s advantage.
But if Foote has the dirt on unionists that means he very likely has the dirt on nationalists as well.
Maybe that’s the reason he was appointed? And if that’s the case Foote is now effectively the leader of the SNP.
Every party that currently has a chance of winning an election is determined to make you a lot poorer and also replace you with migrants asap.
Political parties are the problem.
Foote and mouth disease has set in at the SNP. Time to put the animal down.
Monica Worley says:
24 August, 2023 at 2:06 pm
I hope you can also look into who appointed Foote as CEO. The NEC was “informed” of the decision. Who the heck has the power to make this call?
Not Humza, that’s for sure!
Here one from september 2015 where he appears to be saying he voted no because salmond was not offering real independence (the conservative & ukip argument!) and continuing to use the pound would make scotland a colony (apparently, in his circles*, £uk must still have meant £england despite the 2015 GE result)
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/inside-vow-how-historic-daily-6464878
Given that background I doubt the money side of things will have been his strong point at interview- unless and to extent the principal reason for his appointment is to use his particular expertise to spin one off public expenses, such as £24 million for countries suffering from climate change, into a maui time share or two
* guessing that would include Brown & Darling so not necessarily without conviction, experience or much of a clue in the matter.
There’s mare chance of polis finding the missing Malaysian flight MH 370 than finding that SNP missing doe resting in the accounts .
Discrepancy between the general election spending figures could be down to notional spending which will have to be declared in the EC figure. With respect to the loss in income from drop of membership, the real hit will be experienced this year since it will be first full year of reduced membership numbers and the corresponding drop in association income.
Surely if that money exists, they aren’t ALLOWED to hide it from their auditors? And where’s their Westminster short money?
There’s going to be a hell of a reckoning one day soon.
And can any SNP members/former members explain what the Constitution says about “appointing” a CEO?
And, as a side note, I don’t believe their membership is in the 80K range. If that’s what they’re admitting, it must be a lot lower.
With Sturgeon’s statsi police force cutting all funding for her 600K Nicola Queen of Scotch guard. I do wonder if she’ll be resigning immediately to write that book outside the limelight.
I have moved from thinking Nicola was duped to thinking she was a plant, willingly or otherwise.
I wonder if there is a reason for removing her protection team, is she being lined up to be silenced and end the speculation.
The SNP is in utter electoral melt down.
Like the Liberal Democrats before them they are heading into history. But frankly this is a very good thing. The SNP is a stinking pile of arrogant corrupt, incompetent and ("Tractor" - Ed)ous troughers who have lost public support.
Take your pick about which of these accolades apply but I’m combination across the spectrum they have destroyed a once great party.
And now the figures reflect it all so clearly. A membership depleted by over 80,000, half a million votes gone, all legacy donations dried up, they are breathing their last on Westminster hand outs.
But let no one think that Labour will be the beneficiary. Scotland still wants independence and the mechanisms are now in place to achieve that. So it is in truth good that the SNP are imploding. The sooner gone the better.
Time to get creative.
Insurance fire at Gordon Lamb House?
Selling peerages?
‘damoclesian conversion’ is a new one on me.
Journalists???
David Hannah @ 15.21.
Ms Sturgeon resign ? Surely you jest, David.
Not whilst she can emulate her former Finance Secretary, Derek Mackay, who just didn’t bother going in to Holyrood for well over a year whilst still on full salary of £64,000+ per year, expenses and pension contributions.
That’s one thing every one of these troughers, whether at Westminster or Holyrood, is reluctant to do irrespective of Party.
It’s not like she’s likely to be embarrassed by the Party at Holyrood, after all they even sent her flowers to reward her for being at the centre of an as yet unresolved Police investigation.
I think that Nicola Sturgeon is such a backstabber that even the British State can’t trust her as a devious informant… Now that the SNP is under Unionist control.
I wonder if she’s to be sacrificed
The SNP. Under Unionist high command.
The vow is delivered…
This is what happens in a parliament of England is running Scotland as a Colony.
Believe in fairies and you find mole hills surrounded by faery rings and magic mushrooms.
Stop believing and you suddenly realise you have travelled through a portal to a independent Scotland with your feet firmly planted on Scottish soil.
Keep believing in fairy dust and fairy ring fenced gold and you will see green goblins taking over Scotland,
The evil witch of the north and her wicked english parliament bosses of Scotland.
IT IS ONLY THE MISTS OF MAKE BELIEVE FAIRY DUST LOST TO THE MEMORIES OF HISTORY.
But The ancient kingdom of Scotland is not lost, it still exists, it has been shrouded from view by magic spells and magic words, And a spell was cast over that proud nation
And the kingdom of Scots have been and are still under that fallacious magic spell for over three hundred years,
But the foreign kingdom sends its workers out to recast the spell in case any Scot should start awakening,
It has installed branch offices while everyone slept, ready to confuse and knock on the head any captive of that ancient kingdom that stretches and yawns,
Some are called trolls,
Damoclesian sic conversion, anything to do with heat pumps?
Get one, or else..
Any of the unionist parties could support the offer of a referendum after the next GE on the grounds of correcting a democratic deficit (real or imagined). Such a step now would effectively take away the reason for the SNP to exist because their combination of social democratic social policies and neoliberal economic commitments are offered by others. But as you suggest, the Labour Party seems to want to win simply by not being the actual Tory Party. Mind you, my recollection is that that was the stance taken by Blair in 1979 (a two year commitment to existing spending plans) and it didn’t damage his chances, more evidence perhaps that governments lose elections more than oppositions win them.
The Scottish public sector may be bankrupt and provide the shittiest services in living memory, but thankfully the SNP is finally implementing the People’s Priorities:
Humza Yousaf to announce £24 million for countries worst hit by climate crisis
Funding will go to support work in Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia.
“Assume the double negative “at no point said nothing whatsoever” should read ANYthing?!”
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU MEAN.
Excellent article Rev, Mr Foote will get £95k a year in his new post at the SNP. With no one or group of SNP MSPs/MPs coming forward to save the party and Scotland from this union, its time to let the SNP die, give your votes to the Alba party from now on.
Here’s some more info from the SNP’s fanzine.
“Figures published by the Electoral Commission on Thursday show the party spent just over £5.05 million in the last year, around £200,000 less than in 2021, but received just £4.25m in income.
This has resulted in a deficit of £803,659.
There was a decrease in the amount of income from membership fees, dropping from £2,516,854 in 2021 to £2,286,944. The accounts reveal members gave “the soaring cost of living… as the reason for cancelling or lowering membership payments”.
Meanwhile, fundraising income fell from £437,820 in 2021 to £384,984 in 2022.
The accounts state: “Neither this deficit, nor the balance sheet, are out of keeping with other years in which nation-wide elections were fought, including 2021.
Donations also halved from £695,000 to £368,000, but conference income grew significantly from £182,000 to £522,000.
On expenditure, office costs increased from £370,684 to 3582,897, as did staffing costs, from £1,282,780 in 2021 to £1,329,403 in 2022.
Miscellaneous expenditure also grew from £155,381 in 2021, to £276,655 last year.
The party is understood to still owe £60,000 to former chief executive Peter Murrell, who loaned the party £107,620 in June 2021 to “assist with cashflow”.
His identity in the accounts is referred to as “executive management”.”
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenational.scot%2Fnews%2F23744183.snp-deficit-increases-800k-public-donations-plummet%2F
@ Johnlm: “damoclesian conversion..”
So Foote isn’t even literate. Unless it was his subconscious speaking about how the SNP operates internally. “You either do as you’re told by Sturgeon/Murrell or some sidekick, or you will find a sword cutting you off from all you hold dear.”
agree with a lot of this, one thing id pick up on is the enthusiasm and party identity data.
the data doesnt take into account the long standing “once independence is achieved, I won’t vote SNP” tranche of SNP voters.
It’s (supposedly) a cause of independence, not a run of the mill rich/right poor/left type political party.
A huge part of the appeal of independence is the birth of new political parties. a lot of snp voters are voting for them to be put out of existence..to some extent.
I believe this nuance isn’t picked up in the raw data.
That said, SNP are clearly becoming more unpopular amongst even their own voters and those sympathetic. have to be blind and deaf not see that.
JohnIm 4.02pm wrote:
‘damoclesian conversion’ is a new one on me.
Journalists???
Maybe replacing ‘Damascene’ wasn’t an embarrassing slip of the pen. After all, Foote could be said to be holding the scissors rather than be sitting under the sword. Maybe one conversion followed the other.
And sitting on the fence seems to have had its attractions along the way too, as a concept (“The reality is I have always thought as a concept that Scotland should be independent”).
Too many conversions going on. Too many diversions as well. We’re all being played.
Hmmm, can an underbelly really be ‘vicious’?
Anyhow, good to see Foote on the team. There is always room for converts in the SNP’s big blue tent.
First order of business for him will surely be to review the SNP’s membership numbers to find out if the 70k number was a lie too.
Second order of business will no doubt be to audit the leader vote to find out whether the votes cast were legit. Hmmmm… Humza elected by 52% of votes, only around 60% turnout, process run by proven liar subsequently found hoarding motor home, hmmmm….
Steepbrae,
We are all being played, we have been played for a very long time,
And the tune is not a pretty one,
I wonder what Alba will do now they know Westminster has been operating as the parliament of England MAKING TREATIES?
NOTHING.
Is a ‘Damoclesian conversion’ when they cut yer tadger off wi a sword?
I honestly believe that the SNP, under Sturgeon, had already done a ‘backroom’ deal with Keir Starmer, that in the event of a Labour UK government he would offer Devo Max, on the proviso that the SNP Scottish Government fully backed it. In that context Murray Foote would fit right in.
It would quite literally put Labour back in control of Scotland, whilst helping to kill independence. SNP and Labour in cahoots, whilst pretending to the general public that neither would work with each other. Why secret? Because in England, the Tories would destroy Labour, if they were planning to work with the SNP if elected.
Such a backroom agreement, would also explain the endless dithering by Sturgeon (and now Humza) to avoid independence, since if we think back, at various stages over the past five years, everybody thought the Tory government was about to collapse. This was also true during the brexit mess, then during covid, with all the corruption by Tories and Truss, Boris etc..
That would also explain why the SNP refuse to work with other pro independence parties (the greens don’t count). And also why they despise and smear ALBA party.
Otherwise, we have to believe that in all of Scotland there was just nobody else suitable other than the man who helped prevent Scottish independence in 2014 (Murray Foote), to take on the role of SNP Chief executive. And I for one, do not believe that for one freaking second.
The SNP, the party of devo max.
“Maybe replacing ‘Damascene’ wasn’t an embarrassing slip of the pen. After all, Foote could be said to be holding the scissors rather than be sitting under the sword. Maybe one conversion followed the other.”
Thought that occurred to me when I saw The National’s front page today. The whisper word balloon for Humza saying “Do I get to keep my job boss?” popped into my head.
Keeping it classical then I suppose us poor sods are a bit of a shoo-in for Sysyphus are we not?
James Che @ 4:29 pm
“And the kingdom of Scots have been and are still under that fallacious magic spell for over three hundred years”
Aye James, its bloody Brigadoon an a fowk dozin awa ower chree hunner year an mair, haud doun wi thon colonial deceit cawed a ‘union’ an a paircel o wickit rogues an compluthers.
Colonialism is aye the same; a people calcified and motionless, no more than observers in thair ain land, ultimately perishing – the only remedy liberation.
@ Doug24 August, 2023 at 2:45 pm
These are the same deluded people who was where saying Brexit has to happen then we need to know what the Brexit deal is then we need to leave the EU and the list goes on and on.
The Fk’ing SNP does not want Independence end of, hence the appointment of Mr VOW “Some SNP loyalists on other sites have said Foote’s appointment is potentially a good thing for the SNP and independence because he’s an experienced journalist who might have the dirt on unionist politicians and can use that to the SNP’s advantage.”.
The Rat (Mr Vow) is only their to continue with the propaganda of FAKE news, the SNP are experts at it in Scotland.
HUMZA has made it perfectly clear for all, Independence is DEAD and buried. Mr VOW resigned because he had given out the WRONG INFORMATION,and now he’s back as the CEO AYE right he’s their to try and keep the SNP MP seats at Westminster and to promote more fake news on Independence.
I’m surprised a man of you intelligence reads such shit.
Peter A Bell has a post up managing expectations of foote’s appointment, UNSURPRISINGLY because it is about his beloved Scottish Nonce Party who are the ONLY ones in the whole wide world who can get us independence it is outlining to the peasants, sorry readers, that there has to be a reason that the hierarchy has made this appointment in this way
Perhaps as Peter outlines we peasants, sorry again, readers, don’t really know the full story, maybe Murray will be a great CE, maybe Murray had no choice but to publish the VOW, maybe Murray was just following orders just like the Germans during the war, maybe Murray REALLY REALLY is a dedicated independence supporter, maybe Murray was frightened for his life and felt he had no other option but to create the VOW and save himself and Scotland from impending disaster, maybe Murray owes his life to the crypt crawler Broon and he had to repay him somehow
My belief differs from Peter’s, I think Murray was and is a duplicitous bastard who sold out his country and will do so again alongside the other duplicitous bastards within the corrupt and rotted carcase of the former independence party
The tragedy of it all is that the snp are not TOTALLY TO BLAME the people like Peter who continue to vote for these ("Tractor" - Ed)s and look desperately to excuse and explain the reasons for their betrayal despite overwhelming evidence of their corruption and lies are IMO the REAL BETRAYERS OF SCOTLAND AND INDEPENDENCE
The corruption and lies of the snp will CONTINUE and multiply as long as fools and idiots vote for them, the way to STOP THEM is to not vote for them
@barelybare says:24 August, 2023 at 5:31 pm
Humza elected by 52% of votes, only around 60% turnout, process run by proven liar subsequently found hoarding motor home, hmmmm
Well remembered.
Sometimes I think everybody else has forgotten that little wrinkle.
Thing is though, with Humza’s election being flawed and fraudulent, he isn’t the leader of the SNP, he isn’t the FM of Scotland, and his words and actions have no more legitimacy than mine.
Odd that there is so little coverage of that blot on Scotland’s honour.
Strong, the cringe is, in us.
Seems a shame to let 24th August, Independence Day, pass by unremarked.
No, not our Independence Day. We don’t have one, but that’s no reason to be so churlish and dog-in-a-manger that we begrudge one to other free, sovereign, independent nations.
Raising my glass in a toast now: Happy Independence Day, and all the very best from this Sovereign Scot.
Slàinte mhath!
There’s a welter of contradictory claims, statistics and facts online. I don’t have the time to wade through them.”
John Main @10.54am 17 August 2023
The EC indicates in the figure above that the regulated period for the general election ran from Thursday 9 June 2016 to Thursday 8 June. Political parties spending over £250,000 during that period were required to submit audited spending returns.
If I am not mistaken, Theresa May did not publicly announce her intention to call a snap General Election until the 18th April 2017. That is over 10 months AFTER the “regulated period for the GE” actually started.
Unless the leadership and CEOs of every political party knew a year in advance that an election was going to take place around June 2017, the expenditure on campaigning from 9 June 2016 to 18th April 2017 was not necessarily for this GE, it could have been for something else.
For instance, from 9 to 22 June 2016, parties were still campaigning for the EU referendum. So why should that expenditure be included in the audit for the GE?
Was this an excuse to find out by the back door how much money was being spent on campaigning for independence and against Brexit in Scotland?
The 2017 fundraiser for the indyref and Sturgeon’s speech of 13 March 2017 when she made public her intention to call a second independence referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, fell within that “regulated period”. Why should any campaigning for indyref during that time fall within that “regulated period” for the 2017 GE?
Since the political fraud announced in 2015 that “a vote for the SNP was not a vote for independence nor even a vote for a referendum” AFTER the polls were already predicting a landslide win for the SNP, I have been often wondering until what point the result of elections in the UK is decided before hand so the propaganda pumped by “press”, “broadcasters”, party “leaders” and their drones during the “election” “campaign” is nothing more than post-vote expectation management rather than an active exercise in vote-persuasion.
The predicted landslide win of the SNP in 2015, so soon after an official 55% no vote, and that rather convenient for the union comment by Sturgeon which effectively defanged the SNP and rendering that landslide win useless, has made me question the referendum result time and time again.
I also keep coming back over and over again to question until what point the con-artists who orchestrated, designed and rushed the VOW through, did so to manage post-referendum expectations after their official result was released rather than to persuade people to vote no.
In other words, I have often wondered until what point that con act of the vow was designed to justify the official result and made it credible rather than to produce it. Just like I wonder if the, now almost weekly, “reports” from Prof Curtice announcing the miraculous resurrection of Labour in Scotland are not predicting reports but rather post-election expectation management.
Considering the rather interesting point the REv has exposed in the article above that this much hoped Labour “resurrection” does not appear to be resulting from a stampede of votes from the SNP, but rather from a rush of votes coming from the unionist side, Curtice’s weekly resurrection updates are beginning to sound an awful lot like post-vote expectations management – preparing us for a result, rather than predicting it.
I have the uncomfortable feeling the leadership of political parties travels at completely different speed than the general public with regards to knowledge of when elections are going to take place.
I wonder if powers are colluding to keep voters in the dark until last minute to give themselves sufficient time to drown us in propaganda and “weekly reports” to manage our post-vote expectations and stop us questioning the “official” result.
Clearly, I have completely lost all trust in UK and Scottish elections. I do no longer believe a single word coming from “official” sources, traditional “press”, “broadcasters”, Gordon Brown and other political relics, self-appointed “professors”, “experts” emerging out of nowhere or political opinion “influencers” clearly following an agenda.
https://commonweal.scot/this-month-in-climate/
… Has anyone actually considered that supposedly “planet saving environmentally friendly” polices being rolled out, and greenwashing guilt tripping the populace in Scotland are actually exacerbating the climate crisis.
Scotland pretty much all the time has a surplus of leccy energy generated from renewable sources, with that generation capacity increasing significantly as more sites (including the ScotWind blocks as and when they are developed) come online.
So just what is the point of using up even more of the earth’s resources in heavily energy intensive industrial processes to manufacture solar PV panels and associated electronic control system in far flung lands, and then transport them across continents in huge bunker fuel burning cargo ships to be installed in badly compromised locations in Scotland. And the same goes for ASHP…
I’m sorry, but this is fucking madness.
Just prioritise insulating our properties as best we can and heat them using the green leccy through the existing grid, and stop the rampant planet wrecking consumerism of making all this pointless overly costly and complex paraphernalia to clag onto totally unsuitable properties.
Mia @ 7:50 pm
“I do no longer believe a single word coming from “official” sources, traditional “press”, “broadcasters”, Gordon Brown and other political relics, self-appointed “professors”, “experts” emerging out of nowhere or political opinion “influencers” clearly following an agenda.”
Yes Mia, a colonial elite mindset is absolutely rotten and some considerable distance from civilization, its aim is only to keep a people hemmed in through an ever tightening colonial ‘corset’. Thus, a colonized people are required to:
“..hold as enemies sadistic governors and greedy bankers, check-licking politicians and subservient judges, venomous journalists, goitrous academics, ethnographers who go in for metaphysics, chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche, the paternalists, the embracers, the corruptors, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hoodwinkers, the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, the obscurers, the inventors of subterfuges, the chalatans and tricksters, (and) the dealers in gobbledygook” (Aime Cesaire)
We have now witnessed most if not all of these characters appear before us, especially since 2014 when ‘colonialism was imperiled’.
Twathater: Jeez. Does anyone still even read Peter A Bell?
The guardian of the one true way, who won’t reveal the answer, but will happily shoot down everyone else’s.
What an arrogant fud of a man.
Peter Bell still thinks he is a true patriot by voting SNP! Even when he knows they won’t do anything for independence. He is a walking talking contradiction.
Council elections have never, in West Lothian, been funded by the SNP party HQ. They contribute zero to assist Council campaigns, unlike parliamentary campaigns. Nor did the local MP or MSP make any financial commitment to Council elections.
I note that the good Cllr has forgot to put a year against the October Indy Conf. Is that deliberate or just an oversight? Or is it the sequel to Dundee?
The disparity between the declared spend in 2017 in the accounts and at the Electoral Commission could be explained by the latter figure including notional expenditure and the accounts recording cash expenditure. So if someone had donated the use of vehicles or a billboard for example that would be included in the Electoral Commission total but not in the accounts.
@ Grendel and Big Jock ,YES Peter is still disappointed that he wasn’t adopted by the snp , I have a concern now that he has announced himself as a spokesperson for SALVO and Liberation.scot, at the recent AUOB march he was giving it laldy on stage about the Stirling Directive as if he was the official spokesperson and quite honestly I think he would turn more people off with his dictatorial I’m always right denigrating attitude
His continued exhortation for people to vote snp is the reason those bastards feel untouchable, the only way to get rid of them is to destroy them and start over with REAL independence supporters
@twathater: PABs attitude towards every other independence supporter who voices a different opinion to his has become tiresome. Disagree with one of his proclamations and you immediately become the recipient of a barrage of filth. He would cause an argument in an empty room.
I pity Salvo, Liberation or any other People’s Front of Judea offshoot of the independence movement who has him on board.
Never mind about all the doom and gloom, surely Scotland’s star will rise when the world finds out that rather than spend money on ferries, the drug problem, education, or health outcomes, the SNP are going to pay climate reparations to Pakistan, among others?
Because of course it’s all because the likes of my grandad dug coal in Lanarkshire for a living that that Pakistan is flooded (environmental degredadtion associated with a x 4 increase in population since partitiion of course has nothing to do with it).
Therefore I have to pay extra tax to accommodate. WTF is up with these people? Did anyone actually vote for this?
At 31/12/2022 the SNP had a cash balance of £ 46,039
It must have received outside assistance in the form of grants or donations in order to have had sufficient cash to keep going until May 2023 when the ‘Short money’ was paid.
The accountants signed off the Accounts on 30th June 2023, after the date on which the UK Parliament ‘Short money’ was paid. This is approximately £ 1.2 million. This probably helped with the ‘going concern’ worries facing the parties involved in preparing and signing off the Accounts.
Where does the ‘Short money’ go in the SNP Accounts ? It does not jump out of any of the Income lines in 2022 or 2021.
It will be another year before the Accounts of 2023 show the ‘Short money’.
https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Accounts/Documents/25329
“Where does the ‘Short money’ go in the SNP Accounts ? It does not jump out of any of the Income lines in 2022 or 2021.’
It goes to the Westminster Parliamentary group, who post separate accounts from those of the central party.