So, this is interesting
Posted on
November 08, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From the defence white paper “Defence Industrial Strategy”, published in 2005 by the Labour government of Tony Blair. “Onshore” in this context means “in the UK”.
Just out of curiosity, can anyone tell us when those policies changed?
with the wind! The wind being every time a unionist politician opens their mouth!
If Blair was involved there’ll be a way to weasle out somewhere
So – in a Scotland with wings, we hang onto one aircraft carrier and share its use with other enlightened nations to help others who need emergency aid?
I think the policy changed when the Scottish independence referendum became a possibility, then a reality.
Just out of curiosity, can anyone tell us when those policies changed?
the night salmond won a majority
They didn’t! Unionists lie like a cheap Sekio watch.
Any Questions. The DFM, and Jola. Fun fun fun, starting right now. And Ivan too
heraldnomore
Where ?
@gordoz
Radio 4 horribly bad already, dear oh dear.
@Albalha
If this is bad, just wait until Any Answers…
It’s why the UK doesn’t have a written constitution, everything can change and be changed.
Won’t it be great to be in an independent Scotland with a written constitution approved by the people?
Paula Rosa at 7:52
lumiére
You have the opportunity to hear a debate two weeks from today between Nicola Sturgeon and Alastair Darling hosted by Kirsty Wark.
You can also hear opinions on Independence from a host of other worthies.
Who should attend:
“….It is also aimed at a wider section of Scottish society who want to be better informed about the most important debate in Scottish society in the last 300 years.”
That is if you have a spare £132 lying around. link to archive.is
Paula rose says
“So – in a Scotland with wings, we hang onto one aircraft carrier and share its use with other enlightened nations to help others who need emergency aid?”
Don’t dismiss that
they don’t want those carriers and with crowdsource funding ( admittedly massive) one of those carriers could be a signature of the new Scotland,
one which has a humanitarian outlook rather than a warlike approach to foreign policy,now who would want to attack a country who has a love thy neighbour policy?
money that the UK spends on defence/offence could be better spent on humanitarian efforts,
the Red cross was formed by a Swiss gentleman called Henry Dunnant in 1863 He had been appalled at the suffering of thousands of men, on both sides, who were left to die due to lack of care after the Battle of Solferino in 1859.
Anyone care to point to the last time Switzerland was attacked by terrorists?
JohnDman etc etc
Me, but the cost was too severe.
Rev,A must read article link to archive.is and a poignant expression of why an independence Scotland can ultimately curtail Westminster’s Rule Britannia – War is Peace ideology.
For when WWII war hero’s of this union find little but contempt for what the United Kingdom has become – one truly knows – he speaks for the vast majority.
o/t but kinda relevant to yesterdays thread……….
a thread on the guardian
link to theguardian.com
“I used to think that the claim made by unionists, such as rider, that scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid was a just an uneducated slurr contrived to annoy the YES supporters. but looking at this thread, i realise I was wrong, not only does rider believe this of scotland, he believes this about the whole of the UK as well.It isnt racism. it is cynicism, in scotland we call it the scottish cringe. I think this attitude is actually a hangover from our shared emperialist past, as has been pointed out by others. a yes vote in 2014 will be like a monsoon breaking and i sincerley hope that the optimism show by the yes supporters does not diminish and that it is an attitude which will flourish, not just in scotland across the whole, of the UK,”
re the previous discussion about what the rev will do after we win this referendum……what will you do?. a victory on the 19th sept 2014, is not the end game, it is the starting point, if we convince our fellow scots that things will be better. are we not, all of us, beholden to ensure that this future we imagine comes to pass?
Rev, a must read article link to archive.is and a poignant expression of why an independence Scotland can ultimately curtail Westminster’s Rule Britannia – War is Peace ideology.
For when a WWII war hero’s of this union find little but contempt for what the United Kingdom has become – one truly knows – he speaks for the vast majority.
You can tell when a unionist politician is being two faced and hypocritical…
… their lips move.
Plaudits to Ivan Mckee on a sterling performence! 🙂
albalha -0808 – why horribly bad??
Ach! Missed nearly all of it 🙁 but NS & Ivan Mc spoke well and many cheers and much applause from the audience.
I hope it went well?
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-security-through-technology-technology-equipment-and-support-for-uk-defence-and-security-cm-8278–2
@BillMcLean
Basically the J Dimbleby inability to get anywhere near why he was in Scotland, let’s see what Any Answers throws up. Not a good listen in my opinion and that’s what happens when the host is a fish well out of his normal waters.
Albalha – ta for answer – missed most of the prog and just wondered how Nicola and Ivan performed and how the audience reacted?
Some nasty stuff from wee ruthie on R4, especially the liar accusations at our Nicola. Wee rosa Klebb must have said, it’s your turn me auld bestie!!
REV STU, Of THE BEATEN TRACK 8PM STV CHRISTINE BLEAKLY VISITING A BLOODHOUND KENNEL ( DEDHAM VALE ) ESSEX ( THE HOUNDS WERE USED TO TRACK ) WILLIAM WALLACE ROBERT THE BRUCE / SUBLIMELY REDICTULESS OR WHAT AM I MISSING SOMETHING OF HISTORY
O/T but Newsnet have released their second Duggy Dug cartoon.
link to newsnetscotland.com
Be useful if the good folks on here could share and retweet it for any undecided’s you may know, especially the younger age group that at the moment seem to be the most easily mislead by Project Fear.
Every little helps
@ ayemachrihanish
Thanks for that link, a sobering read.
“I am aghast that the new secretary of state for Scotland can welcome the UK government’s decision to give Scotland the lowest farm payments in the whole of Europe and the UK.
“If Scotland had been a member state in our own right during those negotiations, we would have benefited from a one billion euro uplift.
“We have been denied that uplift and now we are even being denied up to 230 million euro uplift that the UK gets because of Scotland.”
link to bbc.co.uk
@Bunter
I have always got the impression that Ruth Davidson is extremely jealous of Nicola Sturgeon. Davidson referred to her as the “head girl” for a while. Incidentially, what did Davidson accuse Sturgeon of lying about anyway?
Stevenston BT Meeting Report:
The SSP contingent gathered approx. 6.15. Alistair & Alison Wilson (Clan Destiny Films) were already there.
We positioned ourselves outside the front door, two of the guys with the big ‘SSP for Scottish Independence’ banner. I was nearest the door, offering folk our new flyer.
The bodies started to trickle in approx. 6.30, and one of the first was the guy who seemed to be the BT organiser. He was snooty, shunned a leaflet, got himself in a fankle with the door, then vanished. About ten minutes later he reappeared, approached Alistair and Alison. They asked if he wanted to do a wee piece to camera?: he declined, accused them of being Socialist sympathisers, said our presence was intimidating people, that we were ‘protestors’ etc. (A&A, from what they told me, politely told him to get knotted.)
The cars didn’t start to arrive in any number until approx. 6.40. Jackson Carlaw appeared, with a female assistant, and politely accepted an SSP leaflet, saying ‘thank-you’. A true gentleman.
The arrivals were, for the main part, of ‘retirement’ age. Some were young-ish. The ‘real’ BTers were very obvious by their body-language, and several managed to avoid eye-contact and/or any verbal response whatsoever (although ALL struggled, more or less, to open the dodgy doors of the Centre).
Must say, as the only one actually offering leaflets, I didn’t get any hassle at all – one guy (by far the youngest attendee, maybe early-20’s, with wild eyes) gave me a horrible look and said ‘naw’, and there was an elderly gent, distinguished-looking, who opened his hand to accept the leaflet, then screwed his eyes up, looked down at it, backed-off, saying ‘I’m not an undecided’.
There was an unusual couple of dudes, maybe thirty-somethings. who glanced up at our banner before getting the heads down to pass me, and one of them, presumably the driver, was putting his glasses inside a Union Jack spec-case. A trio of extremely elderly women helped each other to the doorway, and the second of them (a beautiful woman, sparkling, alive eyes) smilingly accepted a leaflet while the third checked out the banner along from me – the latter then shrieked at the second to see the banner, that ‘you might want to give that back’ she barked, in a northern English accent, maybe Yorkshire-ish. Her friend ignored her (or didn’t hear her) and went into the Centre. ‘You’ve got a cheek on you sonny,’ said the third, wobbling both of her own cheeks indignantly.
From 6.45 to 7.00 it went very quickly. A lot of people seemed to appear at once, but there’s no suggestion that they were bussed-in. The car-park was full.
Suffice it to say, us SSP-ers dispersed after doing some wee vox-pops for Clan Destiny Films. I went home, scoffed some Lambrini, had a couple of fags, then went back to the centre, about 8.20. wearing different clothes, and (with a dog on a leash in each hand) had a brief word with the people who were still hanging about outside – they were all Yes people: some have posted here, all know about WoS. They will give you all the ins and outs. They reckoned that up to half of all present in the meeting (approx 50) were Yes or DK, and all of the questions from the floor were raised by Yes people. (Hey, Aidan man, give us the beans, eh?)
But believe this, friends –
I live right across from that centre. I’ve been living here for the past sixteen years. You get to know places so well, so intimately, that you don’t even know what you know about them until something changes.
And see, tonight? When that meeting had finished? When people were leaving the packed car-park?
What I noticed – and any other local would’ve noticed it too – was a lot of very, very ‘angry’ cars.
You can’t fake that, and no-one would dare make it up – but it happened. A lot of people left that place really, really pissed-off.
But most of the ‘Yes’ folk were still hanging about, chatting.
Go-figure, huh?
@Albalha @Bill McLean
JD defo out of his comfort zone and allowed JoLa and RD to rant O/T didn’t pull them up on calling NS a liar or denying numbers that are in the public domain. The result is some in the audience believing these clowns as they get to spout misinformation unchallenged.
What we need is more debate like Abertay format make the case, rebuttal and answer questions. I don’t think JD deliberately shaped the debate I just think he didn’t understand the Scottish debate.
@the journeyman
Neither Lamont nor Davidson can handle Sturgeon. She is simply too talented and intelligent for them, particularly Stairheid Lamont. It would be no surprise if they got nasty with her tonight. They do the same with Salmond. It will be interesting hear ‘our own’ Ivan McKee’s take on the debate.
Vote yes and kick start ship building in Scotland AND guarantee your job for life or vote no and take what scraps fall off the Westminster table.
It’s a cake or death question, isn’t it?
@Ian Brotherhood
Thanks for the report Ian, looking forward to the video.
Well done, Ian. It’ll be interesting to hear from those who were inside the meeting too. 🙂
@ Ian Brotherhood
Thanks for that Ian. It’s easy to tell you’re a writer.
lambrini IAN must hay been a streesful meeting fur you lol ge up that bloody smoking 3 yrs vaping smoked 8oz a week rollups heath better brain feked lol Thanks for the report
Good of you to report, Ian. Personally I would’ve much rather it was “thoughtful” cars which drove off, but then it’s somewhat difficult to ascertain a car’s emotions unless they’re “aggressive” or “friendly”:
link to online.wsj.com
If I drove, it’d definitely be a “friendly” car.
@Ronnie-
Cheers man.
I hear ye. Have been trying for a long long time.
Serr fecht.
O/t Better Together North Ayrshire in Stevenston tonight. SSP leafleting outside as we went in. Maybe 60 tops in the room. Chairpersons face was a picture as it became obvious to her just how many pro Yes people were in the room during the Q and A session. No positive case for the Union just complaints about the uncertainty, all the fault of the SNPeeeee! A good third of the room was Yes and most question came from us. No straight answers though. Jackson Carlaw was as you would expect, very rude in parts, Labour female MSP struggled to string a coherent sentence together. Night topped of by an impromptu meeting of various Ayrshire Yes people outside exchanging stories and contacts across the three Ayrshires. Really feels like this is there for the winning people get out there!
Cheers to all you guid yins for the support – but don’t listen to my ravings: you will see and hear first-hand testimony in due course, from multiple non-SSP sources.
We were stuck outside, but the real meat an’ tatties of what happened inside will surely surface – what should’ve been a BT ‘launch’ turned out to be another ‘Yes’ advance.
If the SSP helped make it so? Let that be noted.
Ian , ah spent £250 a mth packs of 10 x 2oz an wan spare JACVAPOUR.COM £ 53 6WKS supply costs a wee bit more tae get started with batteries ect Im on 18 mg nicoteen same as virginia rolling tabaco you can get a smaller gig to try out Im V2 lasts longer less charging ge it a bash
Ian Brotherhood how did I miss your post above! Good to see you again outside after the meeting. Good positive vibes tonight!
@Doonfooter-
Gaun yersel man!
Great to see you again, albeit fleeting. More power to you mister. Our Yes/SSP wallpaper tables will meet one of these days.
Looking forward to seeing footage of what happened in there tonight – someone will surely have some, and it will surface eventually.
Keep in touch man.
Great night – result!!
an its a good nite from me catch up themoorra
Ian Brotherhood says:
8 November, 2013 at 9:37 pm
Stevenston BT Meeting Report:
inspirational stuff. inspiring. my mind is working over time
Good on you Ian. Loved to have seen the Chair’s face during the Q & A session. Whould be fun to see some film of it.
Agree with the cat. Looking forward to a BT meeting in the Dundee/Angus area where I want to hand out leaflets. Yes and LFI though, maybe some SSP 🙂
@Thepnr-
If you can get the new SSP ones – the ones I had tonight? – they are proper belter glossy spanking smart.
Do you know your local SSP contact? If not, please message me – I know you know we’ve got an e-mail address for each other somewhere, right?
My whole e-mail list died week before last – if I don’t hear from you, get in touch via Quarantine, eh?
@Ian Brotherhood
The North Ayrshire launch of Better Together this evening turned out to be a fun place for YES people to gather!
Well, okay, it was still infuriating to have to listen to the sheer amount of nonsense that was spouted as the speakers on the panel veered quite inexpertly between degrees of ignorance and outright lies. And we had to have that ‘proud Scots voting NO’ video again… except I used the time to make some notes about their meet-and-greet campaign.
After I met you outside and you guys had unfurled your banner, I went in and found only the set-up crew and frontline people ahead of me, blocking my path. As was done last week at the East Ayrshire launch, they asked me just to ‘sign in’. There were four of them and they wouldn’t let me into the hall before I did so.
I said, as I had last week, “No, I’m only here for the information – those are petitions.” They said: no, no, it’s not a petition; it’s just in case the building burns down, so we know who’s in here. I pointed out that, on the contrary, it was INDEED a Better Together petition. Along with the B.T. logo, it said “I believe that Scotland is stronger within the United Kingdom” in large, bold letters at the top of every sheet. They appeared flustered by my refusal. It was now obvious to them that a YES-cat was stalking among their pigeons.
They said I had to sign something, they had to have my name. How about if I put my name on the BACK of one of the petitions? What could be wrong with that? I said, no, I really don’t want to put my name on a B.T petition, front or back. Well, what about a blank piece of paper, then? Would I put my name down on that? Under duress and wanting to get into the hall, I agreed to this, as long as I could put a statement with it. So they tore a wee sheet out of a notebook and I wrote:
– Aidan Paisley, who does not believe that Scotland is stronger within the United Kingdom, but who has agreed to sign-in “in case there is a fire”
In retrospect, I could have asked whether they wouldn’t let me in unless I signed. “Don’t tell him, Pike!” is a phrase that springs to mind. But really, I wasn’t going there under false pretenses, so I had no real objection to giving them my name in a form of my choosing. But it doesn’t change the fact they’re cheating… CHEATING! Right at the door. “It’s not a petition, it’s just a sign-in sheet.” And, since it happened exactly the same way in East Ayrshire under the auspices of an entirely different B.T bunch, it appears that it is systematic. Get everyone to sign their petition, whether they agree, disagree, or don’t know.
@Aidan-
Seriously mister, you are some sort of hero – no way could I have done that.
Respect.
@Ian Brotherhood
As to the rest of the event, it just wasn’t as slick as the A.D. show last week. In fact, they didn’t even appear to have the goods at all. Their five-minute speeches were more or less exactly as you might imagine them to have been. Currency, Queen, NATO, Nats pretending nothing will change with a YES-vote (strange one!), and nobody knows, we just don’t know what will happen, nobody knows.
Admittedly, it couldn’t have been easy for the speakers on the panel; they probably thought they would be speaking to THEIR people and that they would get a fairly easy ride tonight. Instead, out of an audience of 40 (Alison and I agreed on this exact figure afterwards), at least a quarter turned out to be people of Independent mind. Comprehensively well-informed and rock-solid on the case for YES.
I don’t often get to say this but, North Ayrshire, I’m proud of you. Such incisive questions which all just got fumbled, turned around in circles until the audience were dizzy from the absence of an answer, or, in one particular case, a zinger of a question that tied Scotland’s £4.4bn giveaway last year (or is that get-taken-away?) with massive HS2-style, no-return-for-Scotland spending sprees, was just dropped and ignored right there in front of everyone.
No-one asked a question straight away, so I went first. I was quite open about where I was coming from, that I had attended a couple of YES and a couple of NO events and that I wanted to understand what was really going on. That I thought the case for YES was really clear but I couldn’t get to grips with the case for the Union that Better Together were trying to make. I said I had come down on the side of YES but I hoped they didn’t mind me coming along to ask them a question. They smiled. I then referred them to the B.T leaflet I got last week – the first piece of information is Public Spend Per Head and it shows two stacks of gold coins side by side. The first wee stack says U.K. £10,600, the second, larger stack says Scotland £11,800. I told them I recognised these where these figures came from and that there should be a THIRD stack of coins showing us all how much is raised in Scotland. The third stack – Scotland’s own money – would be higher by another £500 per head (we know it’s more, but keep it simple). I mentioned that these were U.K Treasury figures.
Ugh. The chair, ex-Provost Pat McPhee, asked me if my question for the panel was ‘how much money does Scotland raise?’ I said no, that figure is known, the question is ‘why are B.T not showing the truth about Scotland’s true economic position relative to the U.K?’ (I wonder).
Margaret McDougall, Labour MSP, began searching through her papers for the actual figures. Gordon Bain. Lib Dem B.T. activist looked taken aback and a bit embarrassed (as well he might). He first tried to say he didn’t think anyone really knew how much was raised in Scotland… oh, right, they do know. Then he said he didn’t think it should be about how much money was raised by who.
Jackson Carlo, Conservative, made a show about the big benefits from the U.K and all its international agreements, all the investments that flow to Scotland from this. Die-hard B.T. people around me were murmuring their approval at this. He plucked a big figure, seemingly from the air, to say how many billions better off we were as part of the Union (and later failed to direct me to the evidence for this figure when I asked for this in my follow-up). Carlo then turned his answer into a diatribe against Alex Salmond and the Indy Scotland EU membership issue. Finally, my favourite bit; Margaret McDougall found the figures: “Ah, here they are: Scotland raised 9.9% of the total tax for the U.K, with an 8.4% population share…” She trailed off, so I finished for her: “… and we get 9.3% back.” She agreed that that was the figure.
After that, she seemed to be somewhat bitter in her answers and a little incoherent. Not a happy person. And my face must have bothered Jackson Carlo for the rest of the evening (I couldn’t see it but I imagine my eyes were twinkling in amusement, widening in ever-so-slight amazement at the lies he knew that I knew were lies, a hint of a smile on my lips) because just kept coming back to me repeatedly as he answered other questions: “this gentleman may sit here with that expression on his face and imagine that he has the answers to blah blah blah.” Of course, he didn’t let me give any of those answers he was worried I might have.
I strongly recommend this approach. Be honest and up-front about your position; why shouldn’t a YES person come and ask them questions at such an event? I think we should be tolerant of them and even friendly towards them. And then, in a gentle, non-confrontational way, let them have it. I think trying to shout them down would be counter-productive, tempting though it is to make noises about their rubbish. They have the power in that situation, it’s their event; the more respectful we are of their position, the more devastating our simple little question becomes and the wider the ripples are going to spread. The undecideds are listening. I can’t tell you how beautiful it was to sit back and drink in their words with wide, fully-engaged eyes, letting them know that I knew that they knew that they were lying.
It’s very clear to me now that they have got nothing. It should be fairly easy for the well-informed among us to go and sit in on these events and, in the nicest possible way, call them on it, thereby making that emptiness visible to all.
Hope to meet you again, Ian. You guys were gone when I got out. I’m sure it was one of your number who asked them a cracking question about OBR pessimistic forecasts for oil vs. the forecast of Malcolm Webb of Oil and Gas UK which estimates another fifty years. Someone else called out about ‘upwardly volatile prices’. Ms McDougall’s answer was: ‘we just don’t know’.
Apologies for the immense length of this comment.
I see on Newsnetscotland James Dolan is quoted as having being told personally that if Scotland votes for Independence the Frigates will definitely be not be built on the Clyde.
Perhaps a journalist should ask him who exactly told him this because it strikes me that no one from the Uk Govt has written this down anywhere , just muddied the waters with maybes aye maybes no, perhaps a FOI is required to find out who is correct?
It hardly seems fair that one union official knows but a whole nation is left in the dark
@ianbrotherhood, doonfooter, aidan et al
Thanks for the sterling job on attending, leafleting and reporting on the meeting. Brilliant stuff!
I know it is off topic but thank you very much Ian, Aidan, etc. illuminating read. The angry cars a particularly telling detail…
Aiden says
“Apologies for the immense length of this comment.”
Posts like this I’ll read every day of the week no matter what the length
gaun yersel Aiden 🙂
I think a good plan would be for us to go to BT meetings with Aiden to learn how to attack them with a smile and with effective killer questions, I for one would want to got a BT meeting with you Aiden.
Aiden was a few seats along from last night and was politeness itself despite Carlaws repeated rudeness to him! Carlaw went on repeatedly about “the uncertainty” particularly on the EU. When I asked him why David Cameron hadn’t removed that uncertainty by approaching the EU Carlaws basic answer was why should he! Aiden jumped in politely at that point as Carlaw repeatedly avoided my points about Cameron having the ability to remove uncertainty thereby allowing Scots to make an informed choice at the ballot box. Politeness is the way to deal with these BT meetings IMHO.
They can’t deal with polite rebuttal and incisive questions. Don’t rise to their baiting. They have nothing no case no answers. Last night was my first BT meeting and for me the best thing was seeing with my own eyes that last nights panel know full well that their case is piss poor you could see it in their eyes – Carlaw might believe but the Lab and LibDem looked like they rather be in front of the telly last night rather than facing Q&A. They’re not called Project Fear for nothing because on last nights evidence they are seriously bricking it!
Good to meet you Aiden, check us out on South Ayrshire for Independence on Facebook or we will be on the High Street in Ayr every Sat in Dec with our new Indy Poster Boy three wise men Yes Christmas flyers!
Ian, Aidan – thank you for the great information, brilliantly written.
Aiden, Sterling work ( can we use the £ lol) apologies ma hinder end somebodys goat tae day it YOU jist pulled the short straw ( an git used tae it cause we re rigging it) BT urna the only wan ,s that play dirty lol. Thanks to you & Ian Brotherhood & any one else ( that get,s tortured on our behalf & our thirst for information ) stay sane in the prosses of attending these meetings Many Many THANKS
Forgot to say. Us nasty separatists just couldn’t help ourselves indulging in some serious vandalism while the meeting was going on.
Remember the A5 glossy ‘YES’ posters being handed out at the Calton Hill rally? I’d kept mine, so brought it along last night. After we did the vox pops, with the meeting well underway, the reception area quiet, I blu-tacked it to the outside of the front door so’s they’d all see it on the way out. Don’t know how many of them did see it, but by the time I went over to speak to Doonfooter and Aidan it had been removed.
Hardly Banskie stuff, I know, but it all counts! (Anybody know where and when the next BT meeting is?)
BBc, Radio 4 from ( BEARSDIN ) last night Is ma ears workin DID JOHANN say on a ? ( on Doctors out of hours service ) had to listen again on Iplayer ( INAPROPRIAT PRESENTATION OF OLD PEOPLE FALLING OVER ( therfore having to attend A/E DEPT How INCONSIDERATE OF THEY OLD PEOPLE CHECK IT OUT GUYS was that a good choice of wording from a former TEACHER ( whit did she teach ( ORRAGUMMY ) HER TOUNGE causes MASHINATIONS of her MOOTHWORDS
@Aiden @Ian Brotherhood – well done that was brilliant.
Completely O/T but on last night’s Room 101,Frank Skinner showed a map of GB and said if we had to choose a country that bordered England to get rid of which one would we choose – that would be an easy choice – or words to that effect.
They are definately well pissed about the Govan/Portsmouth decision even though both areas lost jobs.
I think we might see more of this and some DKs in particular will be upset.
Thanks to those that attended and reported on the Stevenson event. I am so jealous. Round here it is still “referendum what referendum?” My time will come!
Aiden, that was fantastic! I’m going to do Yes Ambassador training on Tuesday and hopefully might manage to be a tenth as good as that! (I’ve got a 220-page book to proofread, but I really have to make time to go!)
@john king
I read one of the Rev’s tweets recently where he said he lets truth do the heavy lifting. I think that’s the secret. The truth itself isn’t polarised – it just is. So I’m not fighting with them – it’s not personal. Actually, I’m hoping they care about what is true and what isn’t, or what is good and what isn’t, but if they don’t it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not about me and them, it’s about what is so. I’m not hurting them or really in any way attacking them; I’m just allowing the truth to destroy their argument.
It seems right that at a YES event we should try to win ALL the arguments; dispelling the myths while setting out the full case for Independence is what the event is for. At a NO event, by contrast, less is probably more for the YES-side. If we go with the aim of fighting the entire battle there and then, reacting to every bit of rubbish they speak, they will win automatically because it’s their ground and they control the show. We will become extremely frustrated and any negativity we hurl at them will rebound upon us, making us look aggressive and narrow-minded. They will just say “look at what these YES people are like.” So I can’t see that there are any gains to be had from being difficult or disruptive on B.T turf.
Having had a fairly bad experience with Alistair Darling last week and a good experience last night, I now think that the aim at these events should just be to articulate – in the form of a question – one clear truth. The question we pose sends a message to the panel and makes a statement to the audience. Whatever happens after that is not the battle.
@Doonfooter
So you’re Doonfooter! Your question was so calmly delivered and neutral in tone that I couldn’t tell at first whether you were a Yes, No, or Don’t Know. Then it sank in how deeply incisive and potentially illuminating the question was and it was obvious where you were coming from. I couldn’t believe you couldn’t get anything even resembling an answer to it, which was why I asked if Carlaw had understood what you were asking.
I agree with you about the look in the eyes of the Labour and Lib Dem speakers. They were defeated. Carlaw, on the other hand, appears to live in his own version of reality and I imagine he would go on being that way in an Independent Scotland, virtually unaffected.
Look forward to a proper chat with you. Maybe see you in Ayr one cold Saturday. I was leafletting on a freezing cold street in Saltcoats today and quite a few of us reported meeting with significantly more people in favour of Yes than No.
@Morag
After the B.T event last night, I got collared by a guy who is training YES Ambassadors and he suggested that I come along to a training session this Monday evening in Kilmarnock. Apparently, it involves going on a quest to get 100 people to vote YES. 🙂
The more I think about it, the more the launch of B.T in North Ayrshire looks like it was a networking event for pro-Independence campaigners.
@Aidan-
‘The more I think about it, the more the launch of B.T in North Ayrshire looks like it was a networking event for pro-Independence campaigners.‘
And that’s the logical next step – as well as attending conventional Yes meetings, we should be using each and every BT meeting to get-together, practise our debating skills, and demand to hear the elusive ‘positive case for the union’ that they keep banging on about.