It seems that we’re letting the side down a bit here. If the same percentage of us were willing to vote Yes as the men, we’d be home and dry come September 18th, living in a nuclear-weapon-free democracy for the first time in our lives. But it seems like a lot of us are either not convinced or haven’t begun thinking about it yet.
I don’t believe it’s the former: anyone genuinely looking at the arguments, not to mention the behaviour of those on both sides of the debate, could hardly fail to be convinced that independence is a good thing. So I’m guessing it might be the latter.
We didn’t do a stats post at the start of April (still just under 4m pageviews a month, if you’re curious) but when someone tweeted these figures this morning we thought they were worth a wee toot, because they’re more than just nice news for us.
They’re from the independent web-traffic analysis site Alexa.com, and they detail the relative rankings for the seven biggest dedicated Scottish politics sites on the web.
The last batch of data from our Panelbase poll concerns social attitudes, away from directly party-political issues. We did a whole bunch of these last time, with a mixture of predictable and unexpected results, and Scots had a surprise or two for us again.
We’ve had these sitting around for a few days without getting round to posting them, but as we’re currently knee-deep in the last tranche of data from our Panelbase poll, it seemed as good a time as any to clear the decks.
First up in the ambiguously-named Posterotron is the “respectable” face of British nationalism, in the form of UKIP European-election candidate David Coburn.
That virtuoso display of Olympic-class irony from Mr Davey was part of the latest fearbomb from the No camp – Nick Clegg’s plea for a “Sunshine Strategy” apparently having been a casualty of Lord Robertson’s “cataclysm” – in the shape of yet another “Scotland Analysis” report from the UK government insisting that every single aspect of Scottish independence would be comprehensively and unequivocally disastrous.
With the Scottish Parliament on a two-week break, it appears to have fallen to the Telegraph to take on the role of Johann Lamont this Thursday.
Scottish Labour’s regional manager has recently been under the curious impression that the most pressing issue on the minds of the people of Scotland is the fine detail of the First Minister’s hotel bill during a trip to America to promote the Ryder Cup in 2012, and the Telegraph seems equally obsessed.
But that dramatic splash isn’t quite what it seems.
We particularly like the Scotsman’s use of the word “error”, as in “Whoops, we totally accidentally rewrote this story three times in 24 hours, with four different headlines, in order to make it more and more pejorative and sneery. Tch, clumsy old us, eh?”
We had a couple of questions in our poll that were quite complex and involved, so to give people a wee bit of respite we threw in a little light-hearted one as well.
Q: If this was the referendum ballot paper, how would you vote?
As well as asking the respondents in our latest Panelbase poll what they were thinking right now, we also invited them to have a shot at peering into the future – to be more specific, the future of the UK.
It’s fair to say that their predictions weren’t exactly overflowing with optimism.
If it’s Wednesday, Labour must have changed their position on their future-devolution proposals again. Following our latest highlighting of the glaring contradictions in the shambolic “Devo Nano” plans, responses have started arriving to your letters.
If you’ve been listening closely, you’ll have heard that the position on whether the Scottish Parliament would be able to reduce taxes below the UK level has see-sawed from “No you can’t” (Johann Lamont MSP, 18 March) to “Yes you can” (Richard Baker MSP, 28 March) and back to “No you can’t” again (Tom Clarke MP, 4 April).
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “Every time someone asks Andy Burnham a question he does this amazing goldfish out of water impersonation.” Sep 9, 19:59
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “Out of all the Shires in Scotland Aberdeen seems to produce an altogether unique form of stupidity and arrogance. Lowest…” Sep 9, 19:53
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “I hope people aren’t being distracted by a smirking bald guy and a whole lot of gas. Who would fall…” Sep 9, 19:46
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Wow! Looks like some big, bad, English basturts really are gonna do it. But this time I don’t think they’re…” Sep 9, 18:59
Captain Caveman on Anything But That: “Given the gas was unburned, the CO2/greenhouse gas impact would have been horrendous. Roughly the same as driving an average…” Sep 9, 16:58
agentx on Anything But That: ““John Swinney nightmare as Westminster launches probe into Peter Murrell’s crimes and Lord Advocate’s role in Cabinet” For details read…” Sep 9, 16:39
sam on Anything But That: “sez the UK parlyment England which has about 90 % of UK surface water has problems, to put it mildly,…” Sep 9, 16:37
Captain Caveman on Anything But That: “OK we’re talking methane, not propane, therefore a lower calorific value and all that jazz, but fuck me, 700kg of…” Sep 9, 16:37
agentx on Anything But That: ““Stephen Flynn says he was unaware of ferry gas escape” ——————————————————- No surprise there then!” Sep 9, 15:57
agentx on Anything But That: “The Math Breakdown:Methane Volume: \(700 \text{ kg} \div 0.657 \text{ kg/m³} = \mathbf{1,065.4 \text{ m³}}\) Average UK 4-Bedroom House: A…” Sep 9, 15:54
Minceheid on Anything But That: “Hatey McHateface says: 9 September, 2026 at 2:54 pm Sounds like they were very lucky they didn’t have 82+ incinerated…” Sep 9, 15:10
Ian Smith on Anything But That: “700kg of methane could fill far more than the volume of a four bedroom house, unless it had a double…” Sep 9, 14:56
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Sounds like they were very lucky they didn’t have 82+ incinerated corpses bobbing in the ocean. I guess “lessons will…” Sep 9, 14:54
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Not a bad program for the myopic. Nothing specifically about G@za. I guess it comes under Foreign Policy, but I’m…” Sep 9, 14:47
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: ““which means the pipelines are back on” Good one! Biggest laugh of the day so far. Perhaps to be exceeded…” Sep 9, 14:28
Willie on Anything But That: “Oh dear, news just breaking of the appalling developing country engineering standards in Scotland has just emerged. Seems that in…” Sep 9, 14:23
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Michty! Is it breakfast time already?” Sep 9, 14:20
sam on Anything But That: “I guess you didn’t read this. “OUR MISSION The Scottish Sovereignty Research Group was formed in December 2020, when it…” Sep 9, 14:16
Confused on Anything But That: “leah has a good blog, connecting scottish nationalism into wider geo politics https://archive.ph/gM0JM – she is an american woman and…” Sep 9, 13:55
Confused on Anything But That: “SSRG is perfectly fine – if it was a middle class wankers circle wank setup there would be a whole…” Sep 9, 13:54
Confused on Anything But That: “beggan is a just a turd with an 85IQ, here to disrupt. He is reminiscent of another turd, Mark Boyle,…” Sep 9, 13:53
Confused on Anything But That: “everything is made in china (more or less) ya fucking tit; let’s all buy english flatscreen tellies and english computers…” Sep 9, 13:52
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “The EU is moving at its usual glacial pace towards shutting out Covid Spreader unfair competition within its markets: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/09/eu-buy-european-public-procurement-rules-china-goods-services…” Sep 9, 13:15
James Che on Anything But That: “I do not vote so neither left or right. Or even in the middle. When politics and election improve from…” Sep 9, 12:33
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Mark, Measurements of length have always been relatively arbitrary and it has only been in recent times that it has…” Sep 9, 12:26
James Che on Anything But That: “Mark Beggan. I wll retain my politeness as I have done on wings for the sake of he host of…” Sep 9, 12:21
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: ““differed in some degree from their English equivalents.” Which system would be the more accurate? Was the transition to the…” Sep 9, 11:35
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “Aye Northy never trust the French. A wee eighth of a Scottish inch or a baw hair ken.” Sep 9, 11:24
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: ““professors, authors, policy thinkers, a Labour peer, a broadcaster, and Salvo/Liberation Scotland” I wonder if they will be taking questions.…” Sep 9, 11:07
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: ““move Scotland even a millimetre closer to independence” Sorry, Northy, but no True Sovereign Scot uses the metric system. Prior…” Sep 9, 10:53
