The head and the heart
The deeply dodgy fake-grassroots “Vote No Borders” group of wealthy London-based PR people has been rolling out its “unpolished” voters (their term, not ours) again, this time in a series of what must have been fairly pricey adverts in the Daily Record.
The simplistic, often dreadfully-misinformed quotes in the ads have been causing some irritation and anger among Yes supporters on social media, which is understandable but not constructive. After all, many of us have relied on the press for our information about one thing or another in the past too, and learned a bitter lesson.
So let’s see if we can’t actually be polite and helpful instead.
The Scottish NHS is already independent, Farah. It always has been, since its formation almost 70 years ago. It co-operates extremely well with the English NHS, the Welsh NHS and the Northern Irish HSC, and it will continue to do so after independence, because independence will change absolutely nothing about the relationship between the four Health Services.
The only threat to the NHS is that the English service is being rapidly privatised by the Tories, which will reduce public spending on it and therefore reduce the amount of money in the Scottish block grant, in turn threatening the funding of the Scottish NHS. The only way to prevent that from happening is for Scotland to be independent, so that cuts in England won’t affect our finances.
Well, that doesn’t seem to actually be an argument, Jimmy. Not much we can do with that one. But it’s only through Scotland making its own decisions that you get free personal care and free prescriptions when you get ill. A No vote will put those under threat, because Labour want the rules to be the same on both sides of the border.
(Also, see above about the NHS generally. You’re not getting any younger, and unfortunately you can’t also make yourself 21 again in your head.)
Good news, Mary – nobody’s making you choose. Scotland will still be part of “Britain” after independence, just like Norway and Sweden stayed part of Scandinavia when Norway voted for its independence in 1905. (And it seems to have done pretty well for itself since then.) Britain is a place, not a political system.
The UK government has already said that you (and your children) will get to keep your British citizenship even if Scotland votes for independence. Nobody wants to take your British identity away from you, and nobody’s going to try.
Again, William, you don’t seem to have given us an actual reason why you want to stay in the UK. As best we can guess, it seems perhaps you don’t like the SNP.
But in an independent Scotland you won’t have to vote for the SNP – you can vote for whoever you want, and Scotland will ALWAYS get the government Scotland votes for, not one imposed on it by the people of England.
Once again, Elizabeth, you haven’t said WHY you want a United Kingdom, so it’s hard to understand what you’re thinking.
But if you’re a “true patriot”, as your advert claims, and you get patriotic goosebumps when you hear the Proclaimers, don’t you wonder why they’re both strongly in favour of independence? Don’t you wonder where the emotions that give you goosebumps in their songs come from? Have you ever listened to the words?
Needing a passport to visit your daughters in England isn’t “crazy”, Martin, it’s a lie. It’s a complete falsehood you’ve been told by the No campaign to frighten you.
People in Northern Ireland don’t need passports to visit their families in the Republic. People in Europe don’t go through border checks to move from one country to another. You have nothing to fear.
Karen, as we said to Mary, “Great Britain” is an island, not a political system. You’ll still be part of it no matter how Scotland votes.
But “security”? The UK is a country that’s just suffered one of the most disastrous financial crashes in history, and is currently building up to another one by repeating the exact same mistakes – inflating a housing bubble that ensures your daughter will never be able to afford her own home.
If you work in a children’s home, you’re probably employed by the public sector. The same public sector that has lost a MILLION jobs since the current government – a government Scotland didn’t elect – came to power. The Tories and Lib Dems are cutting public services to the bone. If you’re worried about job security, are you sure you can afford to keep having English voters elect them for six years out of every ten?
Paul, if you think the current UK is just fine the way it is, nothing we can say would ever persuade you, although we might gently suggest that you read a newspaper once in a while. We won’t waste any more of your time.
Kathleen, don’t you wonder why it’s only ever the No campaign that goes on about Bannockburn? We never mention it, because we’re looking to Scotland’s future, and we don’t much care what happened 700 years ago. To coin a phrase, “Those days are past now, and in the past they must remain”.
But “tribalism”? It’s not in Scotland that UKIP is about to win an election with an angry, racist message about throwing out foreigners. It’s not Scotland that wants to leave the EU and isolate themselves from the rest of the continent. Scotland wants to stay in and work with the people of other nations.
Scotland wants to welcome MORE people from other lands to contribute to our economy and our culture, not lock the doors to people with different accents and skin colours. Scotland wants to join the world in its own right, not build a wall at Dover.
———————————————————————————————-
We’re sure you’re all lovely people. You’re not stupid. We’re not the ones who patronisingly called you “unpolished”. But you’re being lied to, every single day, by people who want to protect THEIR interests, not yours. Labour MPs who want to hang on to their cushy jobs and fat expense accounts, and millionaire Tory businessmen who got their millions out of the way things are (or worse) and want to keep it like that.
Maybe you’re too set in your ways to change now. But maybe you have the open mind to at least have a wee read and a think about some of the things we’ve told you about in this article. If not for your sake then for your children’s and your grandchildren’s.
Everything we’ve linked in blue above should take less than a couple of hours, in total, to read. Can you spare two hours to make sure you’re right? Because you’re about to make the most important decision that anyone in Scotland’s made for hundreds of years – in fact, probably ever – and you might want to be absolutely certain you’ve heard both sides of the argument first.
One of the best pieces you havr written
Vote No Borders could be a slogan to vote for YES. The NO Campaign Misfires. Fools and their money are easily parted.
The Daily Record will lose more readers and the YES vote will increase.
Pollok*
Strongly suspect words have been prepared, they’ve been asked “does this reflect your views y/n?” and its been put out like this. Strikingly similar to early BT leaflet peoples opinions. Read it out loud. People don’t talk like that.
@frankieboy
lol’d
Well said Rev. And if I may again register my disgust that this has been generated by a PR company working out of London with – as best we can tell – taxpayers money.
I don’t know about anybody else but I found these ads to be a bit creepy, like pod-people or something, a facsimile of real people, plastic cold and scripted.
But of course the ads are coined from London, in the minds of bods at a PR agency.
I’m minded to add Barrhead to my avoid list.
I would love the people in these adverts to read this and the links, then post their thoughts here.That would be an interesting read.
Like the scroll keys on Android Stu. Nice one 🙂
Those ads are awful for a whole host of reasons. I feel really sorry for the guy who’s worried about passports. He’s being made to look really silly and the coordinators of this campaign would know that he was completely misinformed. And yet they decided to print it next to the guy’s face and name. Cynical in the extreme as they are hiding behind these people to propagate misinformation.
Were these all on one page or over several pages?
Well refuted Stu this is a great article for undecided’s to read
Just as a note, as if it needed saying: anyone posting rude things about the people in the ads will find their posts deleted.
“Were these all on one page or over several pages?”
Over several pages spread through the paper.
Nicely done, Rev.
As you say, the best way to counter these sorts of things is not irritation, but calm, rational engagement with the issues raised.
An excellent piece. 🙂
Proud Scot klaxon? Check
Bannockburn klaxon? Check
Good god, those London PR companies really think Scots are thick, don’t they?
Surely there must be a case for the Advertising Standards Agency to investigate this pish?
I don’t mind people deciding to vote NO based upon facts, but the above advertisements are a litany of lies and deception. The fault doesn’t lie with the people featured, it lies with the liars who are deceiving them.
My suggestion to any of them, is check out the links in blue in Rev’s article above, and GET the ACTUAL information, not what these liars are feeding you.
I seriously can’t believe that people are still swallowing this passport to visit blackpool guff. It really, really is a lie.
Get the facts.
What is there to say that you haven`t already said, Rev.
Spot on, as usual.
This is as handy a piece of analysis of BT nonsense as you can get, and handy to show soft Nos or undecideds on the ipad. Thanks.
Are we sure that these are real people and not actors? For some reason I find the ex history teacher particularly unconvincing.
I mentioned these ads this morning on an earlier thread.
Picked up Record in the cafe and saw the first one and then another. Once we got home I put the (purloined) Record with my partners ‘Express’ I know…. She gets it for the x-word comp.
Anyhoo after a while I asked what she thought about the ads.
“What ads” Says she. I say “The better together things…vote NO ads”
She never noticed them.. When I showed them to her she just laughed. “Never noticed them, but your paranoid” she said.
FGS! What would 9 ads 50% size of A5 cost at one per page.
Nob Orders seems big in Barrhead, not to mention Pollock, wherever that is.
Ah Rev,
It’s our auld acquaintance Elizabeth Bashir again. The “Darling” of Darling’s project fear.
Nice to see her face again. It’s been a long two weeks since the BBC randomly selected her for their impartial report on the no borders campaign gaining momentum hours after it launched.
She does like the Proclaimers though like all good proud & patriotic Scots do 🙂
It’s just another form of Project Fear. Now they’re trying to humanise it by showing a person with a few ponderous words slapped on the side.
In the last couple of days, I have spoken to 3 folk who are still No’s …but whereas a while ago, they were hardened No’s, I now look upon them as soft No’s.
They are either just worried about the future, or in one case which really surprised me (‘I don’t want currency union. I want our own currency. Give me that, and I’ll vote ‘Yes”. I think he must have thought I was having a funny turn, as I pulled a face as I couldn’t get my head around his way of thinking. You want to remain part of Britain because you thinks its safer that way, but you’ll vote Yes if we just go fully independent and have absolutely hee-haw to do with England! ….Eh!! ….Run that by me again!).
But just from their reactions, the looks, the pondering …I really do believe that they want to vote ‘Yes’. If Yes can take the lead, then I just get the feeling that these folk will go with the crowd. In other words, ‘if they’re all doing it, then stuff it, so am I’
At some point, I ask them a question. ‘How would you feel waking up on the 19th of September, and you found out that Scotland decided to remain with the UK? Would you feel bitter within yourself? Would you feel that you let Scotland down? Would you feel as though you might have done something that you might regret for the rest of your days? …or …do you wake up to hear that Scotland is once more a sovereign nation. How excited would you feel at that very moment? A pure moment of great joy that you will never forget. A moment that only 5 million people will ever know and share in the entire history of the Scots. Sure, it’ll be scary, but what a feeling of knowing that you backed your country, and now you’re going to fight for a better future for not just her, but for those all around you too. Surely in your heart, that is something to strive for!’
Just how uninformed are these BT folk or just how misinformed?
These ads really make these poor folk look bereft of brains.
I have my doubts these were actual quotes.
I have never heard anyone apart from politicians and reporters use the words ‘nats’ and ‘separatists’.
And of course, you can get away with outright lies if you are only giving peoples ‘opinions’.
They’ll need a great deal more than this soft-headed PR tripe if the tories get even more polls showing them beating Labour.
Just how upset would ‘better together’ and this tory bankrolled fake ‘grassroots’ campaign get were there to be wall to wall political advertising of various happy smiling Yes supporters, from all walks of life, endorsing the campaign slogan..
“Of course I’m voting Yes, I’m Scottish.”
I don’t think they would like that one bit.
Karen (44) is from “Pollock”?
Something fishy about this one.
Maybe worth throwing some of the funds at a 1 page DR ad refuting the VNB ads, and saying why, as above?
Yes are only going to be positive on the ad front and it is a demographic that we struggle to get to in single bites like a whole page ad could do.
I’ll leave it to the Rev to see if it’s worthy of the price.
Over several pages spread through the paper.
Does anyone know how much this must have cost? Daily Record taking the Devil’s shilling…tick tock
My message to those poor people would be this:
Look, when we vote yes, we’ll get nothing but respect. Respect from the world, and yes, respect from London.
What’ll we get if we vote no?
It’s intersting how No are rushing to occupy the territory of blind patriotism and irrational, sentimental attachment to Scotland from which Yes are so keen to distance themselves.
Mo for England!
How could he not turn up for the Commonwealth Games, the boys got all that publicity and a medal to collect. 😉
I said it before I quite like Mo but…
Seems though he just gets to turn up if it comes up his humpf and gets to choose what event(s)to enter. Superstar status indeed.
Well refuted, Stu but we should take care. Following the utterly unwarranted wall-to-wall publicity on its launch by the BritNat BC, VNB appears to be getting most publicity from references to it by us.
Left to its own devices, it may well go the same way as as the similarly heralded Let Wallace Vote. Anyone remember them?
That said, I note they only highlight Farah’s NHS tosh, not her mass killings, migrations and land & property seizures: “That’s what’s gonnae happen here”!
link to logicsrock.blogspot.co.uk
Where is Pollock? Shouldn’t that be Pollok?
Thanks for another excellent piece Stuart. Like several/many others here I find myself using your stuff as the basis for face to face debate in our own local settings. This piece will get a lot of using I think.
RevStu is quite correct. For some reason this was the first time I had picked up a Record in years and these ads were prominent and numerous. This cost money. A good deal of it.
It also shows that the No campaign don’t give a flying f**k about blatantly lying so perhaps it’s time to get out the ‘big guns’ and make David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband the face of No. How about a a few ads with the strapline “vote Yes to get rid of this” featuring the three incompetent Westminster goons. You could pop Farage in too.
@Ian Brotherhood
I have found most of the people in the videos do in fact exist. I have found matching details on the electoral register. Some names are too generic such as Paul Gallagher.
But the history teacher woman is another story. Her name is Kathleen Piacara (not sure of spelling as you onlyhear it in the video). I have tried numerous variations on the spelling and cannot find her anywhere.
At the least it seems odd that she is advocating voting no and isn’t on the register herself. Either that or she isn’t giving us her “official” name.
As a matter of interest has the UK Ministry of Justice got any offices near Glasgow?
I am certainly up for funding adverts debunking the misinformation such as the above!
I’ll be the wee dugs and sausage rolls guy and Donald fae Embra (c/w fleas) are pleased that this lot have come along to take the heat off them!
One wonders how these folk were recruited? I don’t recall any adverts of calls for volunteers.
I’d like to refer these people to the warning words of Willie Rennie, who asked that Mr Salmond call off his “dogs” when Nigel Farage visited Scotland.
Do they want a Neo Fascist Britain? Because that’s the way that politics is heading in the UK.
Unionists supporting Unionists, whatever the potential for social discord.
link to whitefeatherclub.wordpress.com
Doh! * I’ll bet …*
Vote NO borders is Better Together rebranded! Better Together has failed! Oh September please hurry up.
😉
@Sinky
They appear to have an office in Wellington Street. Seems like it’s a combined office with DWP etc.
I do hope those mentioned choose to read and then comment, especially Farah, whom I hope did not take my comment as a personal attack.
“I feel if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”
Almost 20% of our people living in poverty.
One of the lowest levels of life expectancy in western Europe.
Massive health problems associated with deprivation.
High levels of drug and alcohol dependency.
If these turn up on the clockwork orange or in the stations there will be war.. >:(
Paul, 32 from Paisley: “There’s a lot of improvements going on in Scotland. Like there’s new hotels and a new plaza being built in Glasgow.”
Leaving aside the notion of a “new plaza” in Glasgow – where, exactly, and what on earth does the ad mean by a plaza? – maybe Paul should look to his home town, which has become a wasteland thanks to the neo-liberal attitude of building out of town shopping centres and giant Tescos/Asdas everywhere. I can’t imagine a real Buddy with that sort of attitude.
The geographical spread of these ads is interesting too: 4 Glasgow (assuming Pollock is just a typo and not a bar in Cologne), 2 Barrhead, 1 Paisley, one token non-Greater Glasgow one (the old guy from Edinburgh).
People worried about the NHS should also watch Dr Philippa Whitford link to wingsoverscotland.com
A no vote will set in motion the demise of free health care as we know it in Scotland.
These ads have been bugging me all day. What kind of simpleton thought these made a convincing argument for staying in the UK?
Must have been hard to stay so restrained on this one, Stu.
“Must have been hard to stay so restrained on this one, Stu.”
There’s no point in yelling at No voters. They’re normal folk like you and me, they’ve just been lied to for decades by the media. The only people I despise are the organisers of the No campaign, and the excuses for journalists who propagate their lies for them.
Well, that’s confirmation if we ever needed it. The “wee dugs & sausage rolls” video was indeed real.
The contempt the “No” campaign has for the voters is unreal. Do they really expect people to believe such baseless nonsense? Most of these aren’t even arguments. I really don’t see any undecideds being swayed by any of these posters, other than towards “Yes”.
I’m not sure ‘Mary the Civil Servant’ should be doing this…
Okay, I reckon with those ads being left sided ROP insertions at A6 approx size, and on a Monday publication, you are looking at £750 a pop. So with nine ads that would make it £6750 for one day’s advertising costs. With VAT that would push it to £8100.
“Okay, I reckon with those ads being left sided ROP insertions at A6 approx size, and on a Monday publication, you are looking at £750 a pop.”
£750? In the Record? I would be astonished if they got them as cheap as that, although of course they may have got an ideological discount.
I went out and bought the Record to confirm these for myself. Quite unprecedented. I concur with Boglestone that, “I feel really sorry for the guy who’s worried about passports. He’s being made to look really silly and the coordinators of this campaign would know that he was completely misinformed.” The same could be said for the lass lead to believe that her son relies on London for NHS Scotland to function. As I speak, my wife is on the phone to a relative living in England who is unable to get the treatment that she needs there on the NHS, while there would be no problem here. I see that these ads are each credited (bottom right) to Malcolm Offord of the London registered No Borders. The challenge on the Yes side will be to hold to the sort of spirit expressed by Boglestone, and not lose the moral high ground by trading like with like. We must embody the kind of new Scotland that we wish to see, and those who would traduce will only expose themselves.
Complete disassembly of their lies Stu.
I also mentioned this in an earlier thread, but if forgot to mention that the vnb crowd had picked a bad day to do so in the record, as the record had an article highlighting the loss of pensions Scots received in this union.
They even had a bar graph showing we get a shortfall of around £10,000 in our pensions compared to somewhere in the South of England.
Scotland subsidising England again.
Not a good day for vnb.
Pollock,meant to be Pollok of course, as I said previously,307 years and they can’t get the geography right.Not really better together when the uk campaign continues to get the names wrong like go van and scotch town now pollock.Literally can’t spell it,but fervently believe we are better together lol.
Makes me wonder who and where this is made up. 🙂
Excuse my ignorance of all things geographical here but it appears to me that the vast majority of those *ahem* “hero’s of the union” come from various parts of Glasgow. Do VNB have some particular fascination with Glasgow?
I just love that Farah, 42, Charity shop sales assistant. Wee aside for a minute here, WHY do they all have to give their ages, employment details and where they live? What on earth is all that about? Are we supposed to be MORE impressed because they, mostly, come from Glasgow?
Any way back to my heroine, Farah. Well to be fair she’s my heroine cause she is the star of the only VNB video I’ve watched. 😛 What really set her up for me was when she started going on and on about the partitioning of India and Pakistan and how because of all the war and fighting that resulted she didn’t want to vote YES. Apparently she is convinced that after we vote YES we will end up in a border war with rUK for decades. DOH!
Apparently my *ahem* heroine has never spoken to anyone who is voting YES although as she said “they must exist somewhere.” Exist somewhere you blind bat? Try opening your ears and eyes and you’ll find us round every damned corner! DOH!
And the Weirs were duped???
@ Lesley-Anne – maybe she’s worried about perrenials mixing with grass? xx
£750? In the Record? I would be astonished if they got them as cheap as that, although of course they may have got an ideological discount.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was a freebie, or 9 nonsensical simplistic ads for the price of 5. Let’s face it, it’s the same kind of bs they publish on a daily basis anyway.
The new anti-Yes group will be trying to spend as much as they can before the start of the official campaign period and this will be where the bulk of their funds will be going to. Negative advertising as they don’t have the boots on the ground to conduct street work or a door to door campaign. Sadly for them the circulations of newspapers are a shadow of newspaper sales in 1979 or 1997.
They won’t be able to do the same after 31 May as their spending is limited to £150,000.
@Truth (8.54) –
Cheers.
I would be astonished
Steady Stu you’ve maybe been reading too many of JoLa’s mutterings. just don’t say we need a conversation with the people of Scotland. 🙂
It’s difficult to empathise with people who are allowing themselves to be duped by millionaire Tory supporters based in London.
Paula Rose says:
@ Lesley-Anne – maybe she’s worried about perennials mixing with grass? xx
Well she might well be Paula, I’m just not sure that she even knows herself exactly what she’s worried about.
I refuse to apologise for my nation’s history.
Should I do the same for Shakespeares birth anniverary. Or the Battle of Trafalgar? Or not watch countless bloody carnages about World War I on television?
I attend the private view of the new Bannockburn visitor centre – the famous statue reminds us it is a truly great sculpture, the revitalised circle where Bruce planted the flag works well poetry and all, the interactive facilities inside the new centre are very impressive indeed, worth the visit alone, but the new black building is the product of a poverty-stricken budget.
I want my nation free to celebrate its history as it thinks fit, AND to have the budget of a Mary Rose museum to create a superb visitor and education centre!
Understood?
I must admit I do not blame these people at all.
They have been fed misinformation and lies by
politicians and the media for ages.
I’m sure if they were given facts they would have
a different outlook.
One guy I met at my voluntary group declared himself
150% (I know…) No. ‘Nothing will change me.’
Two of us gave him some BBC bias examples and asked him
to check out Wings, Business For Scotland and Newsnet.
He is now saying he is ‘undecided’ but leaning to Yes.
Truth and facts win.
Sorry, I costed for mono, add 30 per cent for colour each advert plus another 4cm on the SCC costing as it’s obvious they are bigger than A6.
So to revise … £1600 inc. VAT per advert = £14,400
As for the cigarette card slogans above – I am certain not a single person who gave their agreement for their portrait to be used knew what was to be added to it in their name.
Every statement is contrived and edited.
“My son is here because of the NHS…” That would be the SCOTTISH NHS, I believe. 🙂
Should have put the ads on the underground and got their money back.
Maybe the Yes campaign should make up their own “average voter” ads, each one debunking each one of the scare stories in these BT ads.
Then ensure the ads are placed on the following page to their corresponding BT ad so that they’re read immediately after the BT one.
I’d even volunteer for one of them. No-one looks more “average” than me! 😀
(Can’t guarantee that my actual quote would be printable though!)
Ian Brotherhood
I think Elizabeth is real and appears to be a go-to-pensioner. I posted a couple of links a few days back, to Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Housing Association brochures she appeared in after getting her flat improved. Just search for her full name, age and street address (appears on Craig Murray’s blog , I think). Or go back to the BBC coverage article here. My links might be there, but I can’t remember.
Oneironaut says:
I’d even volunteer for one of them. No-one looks more “average” than me! 😀
(Can’t guarantee that my actual quote would be printable though!)
I’d also volunteer my services for an advert. Hell I come complete with my own wheel chair, no extra cost for the wheel chair you understand. 😛
Like you though Oneironaut I can not guarantee that what I say will be entirely re-printable. 😛
We have to get cracking with our own adverts.
How about a giant mugshot of David Cameron, with the following caption:
VOTE NO, AND HE WINS
I find it sad that the lad thinks that ‘new hotels and a plaza’ is the answer to the future of an entire country.
Does he really think that the sum parts of our existence as a nation for centuries comes down to a few building projects and he will base his vote on this ?
How come half of them lived in the central belt? have they moved the border without telling us again?
Followed by a mugshot of George Osborne:
VOTE NO AND HE WINS
Followed by Nigel Farage:
VOTE NO AND HE WINS
And so on and so forth.
Going by previous business ads I put in newspapers ( in years gone by ) I’m thinking about £1200-£1500 per page but another, more important question is were they paid for or gifted – is there anyway we could check ?
@ fairiefromtheearth – keep up darling, no borders.
Shady corporations (See Koch Foundation) fund faux climate scientists and flaky self-style pundits to present themselves as experts in the field in order to spread doubt among the masses that climate change is man made. Corporations have, after all, a bottom line to protect.
Tobacco makers did the same with iffy “doctors” who told us, categorically, there was no link between lung cancer and tobacco smoke. They did the same again denying their products were infused with addictive chemicals.
Similar wealthy deceivers are funding Vote No Borders and its opportunistic front man – the false “grass roots” claim title lifted from genuine No Border groups – all to make the people of Scotland think they have no need of empowerment.
They want us to stay docile and controlled.
The rope for all lying jouarnalists 😉 HANG EM HIGH can you guess what job im pushing for? LOL
fairiefromtheearth says:
The rope for all lying jouarnalists 😉 HANG EM HIGH can you guess what job im pushing for? LOL
It wouldn’t be rope maker by any chance ffte? 😛
I see two poll put the Tories in the lead for the UK General election.
A NO vote has become a vote for the Tory party.
Paula Rose sorry thought it was a grassroots borders campaine as theirs a lot of tories their 😉
@Oneironaut
I’d even volunteer for one of them. No-one looks more “average” than me! 😀
I’d have my Proclaimers CD in one hand and a “Remember Bannockburn” flag in the other, wearing my “I hate the English” t-shirt and a kilt with a picture of Alex Salmond on my sporran.
Of course not, I don’t own any of those things, except the Alex Salmond sporran.
God I’m depressed after watching those videos. I don’t think there’s enough wine in the house ….
Meanwhile, I’m engaged in a battle over on Netmums. I seem to be the only person arguing for a Yes vote over there (apart from one or two who said 100% Yes and then bailed).It’s on the Forums under News and Current Affairs. If anyone wants to join in and help me stop feeling like the only Yes in the village that would cheer me up!
no lesley anne but i would go to work with a smile on my face every day. Think how Saddam ended up dieing.
Mr Torrance is letting Herald readers today know he is against self-government.
My observation of his very short march to unionism, more a skip across the lawn, tells me he definitely planning on his own personal empowerment.
Which magaine or which newspaper has he set his sights on … as editor?
It is amazing how hard the union is fighting now. No trick is too dirty. No manipulation of people to be overlooked.
Keep calm and explain to people exactly what is happening. The machine is going to pour money into it’s survival. It needs to continue and the money being spent will all be recoverable from a Scotland held fast.
Each of us has only to convince one more person to vote YES. (Margo 😀 )
fairiefromtheearth says:
no lesley anne but i would go to work with a smile on my face every day. Think how Saddam ended up dieing.
Oh, well I guess you must be after being the undertaker then ffte, I hear it is never going to be a dead end job! 😛
Lesley-Anne guess we better get ffte some lessons.
Another great piece of journalism Stu. Once again to be commended.
@JLT at 8.42pm
You write some great posts, but that last para is one of the best I’ve seen here on Wings. How can I put it – truly inspirational.
Paula Rose says:
Lesley-Anne guess we better get ffte some lessons.
I always say you can never have too much training Paula. 😉
Considering how weak their reasoning is i doubt they are being entirely true to themselves.
It all sounds like a balm for their conscience.
Serious point about the gardener from Paisley who thinks it ain’t broke so why fix it:
This is a very common view in my circles, where people are employed, comfortable homeowners and therefore not interested in politics. People who think they live mostly separate from the machinations of The State, and therefore think they’ve done quite well out of the way things are.
For these people, either you have to open them up to social empathy they’ve hereto never discovered, or scare them a bit (usually starting with the NHS being independent already and also up for cuts by WM’s budgets, then moving onto schools and other areas “safe” under Holyrood’s control).
Living on false emotion and loyalty? Seriously? Just how insulting do these people want to be.
Of course there is the point that I’m sure King Edward and co were telling Robert the Bruce and the Scots that that was a “forever” decision too.
Great to see the scroll buttons back!
Love the captions on this piece- just occurred to me that readers on phones and tablets miss out on these wee asides- anything that can do done there?
And while I’m on a rant, link to books.google.co.uk
Might be where those on the No side of the fence got that phrase from in the first place. Independence as suicide seems a bit OTT though.
By the way – excellent article Stu.
The key to this is ignorance. Only about 20% of the population actively want a No vote. The rest can be persuaded – but not if they remain ignorant. Ignorant of the facts (eg the NHS, or borders), ignorant of what a No entails (eg Labour’s continuing squeeze of the poor like the coalition, or the massive budget cuts through Barnett), ignorant of the political reality (like Stu’s earlier article on Why There Will Be A Currency Union), or just ignorant of how the papers and the news on the telly are lying at worst and consciously misrepresenting the debate at best.
@ Lesley-Anne maybe we could offer corrective courses in grammar and correct use of the english language?
@Truth
Kathleen “originally from Glasgow” and lived in London…
So could now live anywhere in UK or outside. May not even be registered.
Paula Rose says:
Lesley-Anne guess we better get ffte some lessons.
Don’t know if I’d go that far have you seen some of my posts they must send Stu to pull out his hair at times. 😛
how frustrating that 4 months out, and people still believe this. I sincerely hope the ‘official’ campaign will hit all these silly scare stories on the head. Clearly the individuals haven’t had the information from YES or the internet.
@Gallowglass
Indeed. There are specific guidelines within the civil service regarding this. They apply particularly to the campaign period however, so she’s probably OK for now.
Haven’t you heard Anne, the internet is full of those nasty cybernats who do nothing but tell lies. Oh wait a minute that’s wrong. Ah got it now. The internet is full of those nasty cybernats who do nothing but tell the truth, yes truth got it now! 😛
Got to agree with those who say the people involved have been slightly manipulated.
I would not be surprised if one of them claim in the next week or so that they didnt actually say that !
Without being sexist, check page 3 in the Sun any given day.
Made up example alert !!
Picture of “melanie” 23, kent.
Read the wee box next to her picture…
“Melanie was shocked to read about social deprivation in areas of the country people would traditionally think of as well off. The need for foodbanks in these areas indicate the need for a rebalancing of social justice”
Now, it is not for me to say “Melanie” cannot come up with that commentary, but every page 3 model, every day ?
Nah…!
O.K. peeps, how many of you are gagging at the bit to get your hands on this paper tomorrow?
link to tinyurl.com
Funnily enough it is NOT on the front page of the rUK edition of this ghastly paper.
@Gordon Innes
Well now, this is interesting. I was sure the video said she was from Glasgow, and indeed the on screen text says she is. The on screen text also says she is 69. On the video itself she says she will be 70 in October. What age does this advert in the Daily Record give for her? 77. The fact she isn’t 70 until October means the 77 can’t be a typo as she is currently 69.
I don’t think Kathleen is all she says she is. It’s almost as if she’s choosing her words on the video too. I checked the whole of the UK for her. She is not registered.
I’m away to check all the other ages too. Is it possible these videos were filmed before the 2007 elections and brought out of storage now? I do think she looks older in the paper than she does on the youtube video.
Its frustrating that numerous voters can’t be bothered to check out the facts for themselves.
Not helped by BBC selective reporting.
To-day Baillie Gifford an investment management firm which has £105 billion of funds under management says that they will be remaining in Edinburgh after a YES vote.
Now if they had said they were moving it would be banner headlines but I won’t hold my breathe for wall to wall coverage of a Yes good news story.
Okay, something fishy
Farah on video: 45
Farah in DR: 42
Kathleen on video: 69
Kathleen in DR: 77
The only others in teh ads that also appear in the videos are Paul and Elizabeth whose ages do in fact match.
Why do Farah’s and Kathleen’s ages not match though?
Incidentally Farah and Elizabeth are wearing the same clothes in the video and photos, so presumably taken at the same time.
Found the Baillir Gifford Link here
link to fundweb.co.uk
Also note that Guardian report that Tories ahead in latest polls in England while Ed Miliband was the only leader to receive a lower rating from swing voters than from the electorate as a whole.
link to theguardian.com
Truth says:
Why do Farah’s and Kathleen’s ages not match though?
It couldn’t have something to do with their vanity perhaps could it? 😛
Its quite a sophisticated campaign, project fear lite and aimed straight into the whole Strathclyde region.
You could see it coming with that day long mega blast from the BBC UK wide with big hitter Gavin Esler and now this. The BBC will probably have made their film of those girls singing in the studio with nob.orders team. That will all have been free gratis at BBC expense but this is clearly where they are now paying hard cash with their grass roots thing, “unpolished” no voters vox popping it like this.
Be interesting to see what the next phase is, though its subtly different from a hard core ukok blast Bliar MacDougal style. Probably blanket Radio Clyde ads next as cheaper than tv with same unpolished vote no people along with bill boards of them again across Strathclyde. They’ll probably want them far enough from McDougall’s miserable “you’ll lose the pound and your pension” fearmongering but not too far.
I’m a bit curious about the funding of all this. These jokers said they were going to spend a bomb before the deadline and presumably this is part of it. However they obviously have pots of money.
Am I right in thinking that so long as it’s all paid for before the deadline, they can spend what they like? So they could have ads like this in the Record every day till the referendum and it wouldn’t count if it had all been booked and paid in advance?
Disclaimer: I think Yes Scotland is probably doing this as well, only they have been planning it longer.
I also wonder where the hell that money came from. Possibly if they spend it all on pre-booked ads, we never get to know.
As others have pointed out, those people who say they’re OK with the status quo and can’t see why anything needs to be changed are the disaffected and the politics-unaware. The shock to them, in the event of a No vote, is going to be devastating. What they thought was a safe, easy existence with services they can rely on will be snatched away, and what they think “ain’t broke now” is going to shatter into a million shards.
I agree with the Rev – the people in these vids don’t deserve to be mocked, although if they’re paid actors I’d be less generous. No, it’s those who keep the truth from people who genuinely and honestly believe in the strength of the union that we should target. They’re the ones who will be responsible for condemning ordinary people, who maybe aren’t at all involved in the referendum or politics because they trust the union, to a future of even more austerity and uncertainty if there’s a No vote. It hardly bears thinking about, how badly those trusting voters will feel betrayed.
Great article.
It would be fascinating to hear a response from the subjects in the deceitful propaganda. Is there any way under FoI (they were happy to give their christian names, occupation and place of residency) or through No Borders themselves that this article could be given directly to them to answer?
Inviting No Borders to debate rather than just print lies may may pay entertaining dividends!
Sorry, vicar. this time you’ve lost the plot completely. You should not, just because you can poke legitimate low level fun at this charade, be giving precious web-space to these adverts. This stuff is intended to be poison – and whether it is or not, we do not want to find out the hard way by many new people having seen it, even with witty deflating sarcasm, on your site. I and thousands like me pound pavements and doorsteps delivering, among other things the “Aye, right!” leaflet which lists your website as well as other better sources of Scottish referendum info. I hate the idea that I will be directing people to a site where they can access this septic drivel and – perhaps, perhaps – come to be affected by the other side’s bum rhetoric, for whose accumulative effect they could still fall. PLEASE, please discuss such crap all you like and send it up to and through the roof – but please do NOT again actually besmirch your site by publishing not only one, but a whole suppurating, suite of these adverts – nor any others like them! Please?
Economic Case for an Ind. Scot. 2/4 – Economic Facts – Ivan McKee Youtube . We need more cool heads and facts like this.
@ mike – there are ‘no borders’.
@Lesley-Anne
It couldn’t have something to do with their vanity perhaps could it?
One has got older and the other younger though!
No, I’m now wondering if these are real people after all.
Yet more blabber from the no lot in those ads, do people know they were referred to as ‘unpolished’? Jeez.
I was at a neighbours last night who had a few friends and family round for drinks. The conversation only at the stroke of midnight came round to the referendum, oh dear the host had a hissy fit and stomped about and blurted something about A Salmond then clashed dishes together very rudely. But, while that was all going on I managed to discuss with retired neighbours about the Barnett formula very likely going if its a no, about the mcCrone report, the fact that the parliament in Scotland could be diminished and how the voting in 1979 was twisted to suit the unionists.
One of them did not know that there was even a referendum in 1979, even being born here and having lived here for their whole life. They also asked but what about Darien? Where was I getting this info and who from etc? They read the torygraph.
I think the messages to get across to people on bill boards, in ads, (I hear that the bt ads in the cinemas have been booed at) could be simple short and quick. My neighbour said that he could not understand why the yes supporters think it will all be a utopia with fairy tale lives for all, if it is a YES vote. The message they are getting is that this is a crusade by the SNP particularly A Salmond, and that YES are deluded in their quest for self determination which is misguided and based on a dream.
Sent them info and links, hope they read and watch.
@Truth –
Looks like you’re onto something here mister – do you reckon this person could just be an ‘old dear for hire’, and has been supplied by an agency or suchlike?
“Unpolished”
*shakes head*
You’d have thought you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Ian and Truth – this is a public space darlings, get your facts etc – remember these are people.
@Ian Brotherhood
do you reckon this person could just be an ‘old dear for hire’, and has been supplied by an agency or suchlike?
That went through my head when they first launched and I spent a good few hours (saddo that I am) going through Glasgow talent/model agencies, but turned up nothing.
I think I’m going to have to give it another bash. Farah and Kathleen being the ones to concentrate on.
Dammit, That wasn’t all supposed to be italics.
Sorry folks.
If ordinary punters were to learn that V NOB is fronted by a tory millionaire, they would lose all credibility.
The reporters in the DR should be completely ashamed of themselves as they know that the folk who buy their rag are usually working class – they are not telling their readers the truth.
BTW a work mate of mine who is/was a def No as he believes in the UK, was asking me questions today about the £ as he believed we would lose it – he said – you know all about this!! so I’m sure he believed me when I told him that no-one could stop us using the £.
Perhaps moving to a DK.
Indeed Paula, that’s why I’m avoiding phrases like “unpolished”.
@Lesley-Anne –
That is an instant classic, right up there with the SH front-page. It’ll appear in academic tomes centuries hence.
link to tinyurl.com
Morag
I understand from the local Yes group that the spending limits in the campaign period will include anything paid in advance and published during the official campaign period.
No radio ads coming. You can’t do political ads on telly or radio in the UK. Obviously the big worry for the No campaign is working class west of Scotland voters. That’s principally what these ads tell you, oh and Asian Scots. They’re never going to be enough to counter the effect of a real grass roots campaign and word of mouth transmission of information. If anything this is a sign of how panicked the No campaign has become.
I am not a paid up member of the Stuart fan club because you can be nippy (get more sleep dude).
But this was perfect.
“Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
12 May, 2014 at 9:20 pm
There’s no point in yelling at No voters. They’re normal folk like you and me, they’ve just been lied to for decades by the media.”
Ian Brotherhood says:
@Lesley-Anne –
That is an instant classic, right up there with the SH front-page. It’ll appear in academic tomes centuries hence.
link to tinyurl.com
You’ve got to hand it to those Torygraph editors Ian. I mean they really know how to push everyone’s buttons in a certain fashion in order that MORE people join the increasing numbers of movers and shakers from NO and Don’t Know over to YES! 😉
Great deconstruct, Stu. The lies have all been told before & rebutted many times before. But how many will see the rebuttals on social media or be exposed to grassroots campaigning? For thousands, their only source of info is the MSM including rags like the Record.
What are Yes spending their dosh on? I haven’t yet seen one Yes billboard in Glasgow (seen 3 for BT). I don’t buy newspapers, so don’t know if Yes are advertising there. I haven’t received any Yes literature through the door. The vote is not going to be won unless we persuade a sufficient number of Labour voters, particularly in Fife & west Central Scotland. I don’t know what Labour for Indy’s finances are like. But they could well do with ads targeting Labour voters (or any one dissatisfied with the Tories). And if that means being negative (failure of Scot Labour, 5 more years of Tories etc), I don’t give a toss. There comes a point when you have to beyond the positive message & fight fire with fire.
@Paula Rose –
Well, they’re not really ‘people’, are they? They’re just images of people. Whether or not they are what VNB claims they are is a legitimate question, surely?
TBH, I don’t give much of a toss either way, and I’m sure they’re all a great laugh in the pub, but I’d like to know if they’re ‘real’ people, and I’d also like to know if they were paid for doing this…and I’d also like to know whether or not the words attributed to them ever emerged from their own gobs.
Of course, there’s a very easy way to sort it all definitively – any one of those ‘real’ people could confirm that they did appear in the ads. This is the type of thing that ‘investigative journalists’ are good at facilitating. Unfortunately, it seems we don’t have many of them in Scotland right now.
Ach well. Fuck it, I’m away to Off-topic to post some daft music…
The problem I have with a lot of these types.They have made their minds up without having any basic knowledge of Scotland and what’s happening in the RUK.The NHS one just shows the level of ignorance.A lot of that is down to the MSM.But most of it is just plain lazy people who can’t be arsed doing some research on their own country!
@ Derick Tulloch – oh we all agree dear, god-botherers are a pain.
Just watching the three ring circus that’s Newsnight Scotland – what a shambles with the unionist representatives trying to out talk and talk over each other
Train wreck best description
Right thats me convinced to vote NO, how could anyone disregard those all those truthful remarks and comments. I mean imagine have to get a passport to cross the border to see your daughters, honest you would really really have to imagine that !!!.
At least they have found future readers for the Jackanory programs. Its just as bad as that white paper produced today, saying nothing new, just the same old bolloxs yet again.
As the teacher would say: must try harder on the Nob site, much much harder.
They may be real people but they’re happy to be used in a campaign against democracy so they deserve every bit of abuse going. IMNSHO.
The other thing these ads show – because the messages reveal so clearly who they are targeting and which demographics they are worried about – is that they believe much of their vote is soft and unlikely to turn out. The get out and vote message aimed at ‘unionist’ working class men is so awkwardly phrased because they are trying to find a way of expressing something rather nasty – an appeal to some form of prejudice I suspect – in a style that doesn’t frighten their soft supporters or hold the campaign itself up to ridicule. The main problem is that their core message is so unpleasant that it requires editing to the extent that what’s left becomes meaningless and empty. These ads are never going to deliver the results the No campaign wants. The other difficulty they face is that the concerns of the ‘voters’ are not reflected in the real concerns identified in polls or are only appealing to a minority interest. The demographic motivated by British patriotism is tiny, the ‘stand up to the Nats’ demographic can’t comprise more than a few hundred folk… there is so much about this that doesn’t make sense.
It’s amazing what advertising can do.
Some ordinary – but interestingly diverse – people. Some good photography. Some sensible-sounding statements. And suddenly voting No looks like a calm, blue, reasonable proposition.
Even the name of the group is carefully considered. A grassroots campaign group from the Borders? Or an organisation dedicated to eradicating the borders between nations, bringing us all together in harmonious cooperation with our neighbours? Unlike those nasty separatists, who’ll have gendarmes manning the border posts, with razor wire all along Hadrian’s wall…
The marketers have had decades to refine their techniques, no matter which side of an argument or which product.
Very professional and very slick.
The last sentence does it for me:
“Because you’re about to make the most important decision that anyone in Scotland’s made for hundreds of years – in fact, probably ever – and you might want to be absolutely certain you’ve heard both sides of the argument first.”
The head and the heart is a good title for my post: My wife and I are just back from our first YES Scotland Event tonight, at the Royal George Hotel in Perth. MP Pete Wishart in the chair and a great panel comprising of Pat Kane, Derek Bateman, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh – SNP Euro candidate, and local comedian Bruce Fummey. 150 attendees and standing room only! Straw poll revealed vast majority YES with a few combined Don’t Knows and No’s. A short summary:
Pat- passionate and personal views why YES
Tasmina- polished performer who will make an excellent MEP
Bruce Fummey- half Scottish, half Ghanaian comedian. He did an impassioned recitation of Scots Wha Hae and explained why he chose tonight to join the campaign. Excellent talk and funny too.
Derek- Heartfelt and sincere. The audience listened intently as he spoke. Derek kept it at high level, “Should Scotland be an Independent country?” and posed another question, ‘Would the citizens of any other country in the world invite or allow the another country to run their affairs?” Simple straightforward answer- of course they wouldn’t and why should we!
Good Q and A. One audience member asked how do we counter the MSM and the answer is that they are essentially a lost cause. We will have to do it ourselves and we are making progress. “Conversion through conversation” is the message as well as the Can, Should, Must.
Two hours well invested, feeling even more inspired tonight and signed up to get out and do more for the cause!
VOTE YES!
Just seen a tweet from everyone’s favourite anti independence site VNB. They rejoice in the news from Kathleen aged…get ready for this…are you ready…she’s aged…77 years old! da na! 😉
I couldn’t let that one go bye so have asked them to clarify if she is 77 or as she says in the video 69. 😛
@Lesley-Anne –
We age faster in Scotland.
@ Lesley-Anne bet we’ve got more beautiful women of a certain age voting Yes – (loads of smiley winky thingies).
O/T Do you suppose there is any connection between Alistair Darling being ‘sidelined’ after ‘crisis summit’ (Scottish Daily Mail – now all over Twitter) and the missing IPSOS/MORI poll? Seems more than likely to me.
One thing that seems wrong somehow is that it’s obvious that Better Together is a combination of all three main parties. How does that work when two of them are registered on their own as well as in combination? Do they get to spend twice as much or what?
link to electoralcommission.org.uk
On topic though note anything about the registration numbers. The only company not registered in Scotland, so far, is Vote No Borders. At least Better Together had the common sense to register in Scotland. I assume that companies registered in Scotland are regulated by Scotland and play by our rules, whereas those registered in the rUK don’t.
Ian Brotherhood says:
@Lesley-Anne –
We age faster in Scotland.
Ah that explains the Daily Telegraph’s Scottish edition’s front page headline then. 😉
The NHS (Scotland) was set up 1948. Yet we have “knowledgable” people who still don’t understand that simple fact, after 66 years.
Who is going to pay £27000 for the fees + pocket money? For any of their offspring who want to go to uni.
Who is going to pay any prescriptions for them or their offspring?
Who is going to pay for the care of their elderly relatives.
Not many older people have access to the internet, and the younger ones only want to play games on it. So EBC (they tell the truth) and newspapers are the only information they have exposure to.
@Lesley-Anne
So 77 is absolutely not a typo then and we have it from the lady’s own lips that she is 69.
I wonder what they will say.
I’ve said this for so long, that too many Scots just have no clue about what is controlled here, like our NHS and education. In some ways you can’t blame them for thinking we’re going to lose these things, when they don’t know we alreay have them.
And when these institution get news coverage, it’s never made clear that it’s just NHS England or wherever they talking about.
It’s a sad fact that the first step we need to take is in educating people about these basics. Then we can inform them about how it’s run and what we need to do to protect them.
As soon as people see that we’re already pretty much like a separated couple, then selling the house and signing the divorce papers will seem all the more like a logical step.
@Democracy Reborn:
I’ve seen several billboards for Yes in Glasgow. There’s currently a “Can (crossed out with a red X)’t” one on Darnley Street in Pollokshields, for example.
Jesus, I’ve just popped over to the VNB twitter feed and it shows who they have followed. They have followed someone called Yacky who describes himself as “Rangers and Thatcherite. SNP=Sinn Fein”
Is that the sort of person VNB want to associate with?
I think orri you’ll find the Vote No Borders campaign is registered under No Borders campaign.
Watching ‘Passport to Pimlico’ and wondering how long it will be for UKOK or the Nobs to remake it but located at Coldstream or Gretna. Maybe one of the Nobs’ video stars could audition for Margaret Rutherford’s role, but they’ll need to learn their lines better. Maybe that’s how the Nobs are aiming to spend the taxpayers’ money.
I must have been under a misapprehension. Hopefully that means these creeps will soon shut up.
Truth says:
@Lesley-Anne
So 77 is absolutely not a typo then and we have it from the lady’s own lips that she is 69.
I wonder what they will say.
Well let’s just say I’m one who is not holding their breath. 😛
I wonder what they will say.
“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age.”? 🙂
Apologies for butting in with an OT but I need confirmation of my stance in a discussion.
Background/I have no problem with the new act currently going through parliament[Holyrood].Which allows for a guardian to be named as a point of contact.The person I’m arguing with does.My question is does he have any grounds for his stance?
link to scotsman.com
You can find it @HughOxford2
8:56 PM on 11/05/2014
As I’m not an educator any input would be welcome.
@Lesley-Anne
I think Orri is getting at where the companies are registered, not how they are registered with the electoral commission.
So far as I understand the registration is normally in the country where the Directors are. So in this case England.
@Lesley-Anne –
I would’ve replied to your comment, but I was 50 when I read it, and by the time I started on the response I looked like Marcia’s gravatar and couldn’t move.
This message has been dictated, and I am almost 117 years old.
Fare thee well comrades…I’m crumbling…
Sorry I’m O/T here but I was wondering if this constitutes a split in the Better Together campaign. 😛
link to tinyurl.com
It does beg the question though. If this genuine grassroots campaign can raise the dosh out of their own pockets to fund all these adverts, where are the ads from Yes with all its millions of pounds at its disposal?
Yes, that was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.
Looks like Darling is being sidelined according to front page Express headline. I shouldn’t be so pleased, it probably just frees him up for more after dinner speeches at £60k a pop.
That’s a belter LA
BTW,re Terry Wogan.Spooky,I made many complaints to the beeb regards him.
Lesley-Anne
I liked the comment from Harry Shanks below the picture.
When does the VNB Flowers of Union pop group release their grassroots folk song? It must be soon.
If they actually understood the significance of what the Flower represents in our Flower of Scotland song they would never have called their band Flowers of Union. Did they think it was the thistle, the fools? What an insult, how dare they.
Elizabeth Bashir in the advert was interviewed in the original vnb story by the London BBC guy in George Square. Did the BBC know she was a paid for member of the advertising department of vnb? Or was she just passing like ships in the night…how did she get interviewd by the BBC. Did the BBC accept a placed person of vnb? This and the others need some simple if not risible churnalism.
@goldenayr –
I’m having bother keeping up here…what’s the sketch with Wogan?
While the quotes are, well, what they are and understandably contentious, I think the small print holds even more sinister elements.
Take Farah: her parents “moved to the UK after Partition” – whether this meant India or Pakistan is unclear, but what IS clear to me is that the only reason this piece of her background was mentioned was because her parents moved to the UK after what was originally one united political entity (the British Raj) was then divided into several smaller states.
Thus, No Borders are actively comparing this referendum to the Partition of India. A partition which has resulted in decades of religious strife, turmoil, war and misery. NO, THAT ISN’T LEADING AT ALL.
I dunno I may be cynical but tbe language and tone of kathleens vignette doesn’t sit wwll for a 72yr old wumman
Lesley-Anne:
Interesting that Flipper was in Lewis same time as Ian Davidson. Maybe Davidson did his ‘bayonet the wounded’ bit on him and Brian Wilson delivered the coup de grace. We’ll all miss Flipper’s cheery disposition but I’m sure he’ll liven up the Lords. Only question is which benches he’ll choose to occupy. Maybe he’ll revert to type and join Michael Forsythe’s merry band.
I just can’t think who in their right mind would take Darling’s job.
It’s a poison chalice if ever there was one.
@Taranaich
And furthermore, if you asked her if she wanted India and Pakistan to re-unite, I’m pretty sure what the answer would be.
I was just suggesting to my mum, Danny Alexander might have a crack leading the rearguard. He appears to be the ambitious sort.
I thought he got slaughtered by Alex Neil, at the weekend, where I think he exposed that he is quite happy to lie through his teeth. Not very effectively either.
Can’t decide whether to be sad or head for the bunker- these tag lines are too Orwellian for me “for a successful future” , “for harmony” – 1984 revisited.
I thought political giant Frank Roy had been appointed, what with him being so well-known and capable.
Ian brotherhood
Apologies,skipped to another couple of sites.
The Terry Wogan sketch is part of a discourse on the Eurovision Song Contest LA and I have been having.
No Yew trees involved…at least I don’t think so.
Outside the Palace Theatre in Kilmarnock tonight, a bewildered woman asked me about Brian Wilson and George Galloway. She wasn’t drunk (so far as I could tell/smell) but she was on about them being in there tomorrow.
???
Does anyone know if this is true? Is Galloway appearing alongside the likes of Brian Wilson these days?
Really not sure if these people are not stupid! Let’s agree to hopeless?
link to rapidformations.co.uk
I wonder how they would feel about being ordered to cease and desist in using a company name owned by someone else?
@goldenayr –
Received, and understood…so, for the meantime, he continues to get away with the same blarney he’s been punting for the past forty years.
Result!
@Ian Brotherhood
Galloway’s “Just Say Naw” tour drops by there tomorrow right enough. I’ve just checked his web page.
No mention of Wilson though.
It’s not really about these people, or even whether they exit or not. If what is presented is partially fiction, it doesn’t really matter, because we all know that at least nine people will vote No, for various reasons. It’s hardly news. We can’t shout “these people don’t exist, there ARE no No voters!”
Why should parading nine people, with reasons however truthful or contrived, sway anyone? Obviously, at least nine people will also vote Yes, and it would be just as easy to put on a parade of these people.
But the publicity does influence thinking to some extent. Yes has to get out there and match that some time soon.
O/T
Just been on Guardian & Spectator, posters going orgasmic re Tory leads over Labour for Westminster in both ICM & Ashcroft polls. First national lead for Tories since 2012. Wee Dougie A’s election strategy is obviously going down a treat! Common denominator is Milliband – perceived as a loser. And can anyone explain how Osborne manages to get a +5 approval rating?
I’d love to know what the ‘real people’ in the Record ads would say if asked how they felt about 5 more years of Osbornomics & a govt, yet again, that Scotland didn’t vote for.
Can I just add that it seems Brian Wilson has made several appearances at these “Just Say Naw” events.
Well I never.
The point about No Borders being based in London is that it’s claims of being grassroots don’t hold water when any corporation tax it might have to pay as well as any rates and so on doesn’t actually benefit Scotland. And it sticks out like a sore thumb on that list.
Truth
When you say Wilsons made appearances…were the police called to button up his Mac?
Article in the New York Times regarding the impact of Scottish independence on the EU referendum.
link to nytimes.com
Someone should tell them that Scottish votes make little or no difference in Westminster elections.
Truth says:
Can I just add that it seems Brian Wilson has made several appearances at these “Just Say Naw” events.
Well I never.
Are you sure he doesn’t just turn up to bolster the audience numbers? 😛
For anyone driving around in the Borders, Morag 😉 , keep an eye out for these. I’m not sure they will all be lit up at night so best do your searches in the day time 🙂
link to tinyurl.com
@Truth –
FFS!
I feel bad now about saying that the woman seemed bewildered. Clearly, she was right – I’m wondering now if she was trying to tell me that we (SSP) had picked the wrong night to be outside the place with leaflets etc.
Cheers aplenty mister – could be that we’ll have to go back to Kilmarnock tomorrow…
I wonder how much difference newspaper ads will actually make?
The papers are already heavily pro-unionist.
Even those who just skim over the political stories get the gist of the message.
Whereas YES adverts are giving readers a different viewpoint to think about.
That said, I haven’t seen much newspaper advertising from the YES campaign – just a few of the billboards.
Is it just me or do most of these people look nowhere near the age that is stated? Would be really funny to track these people down and find out if they were fakes or not.
Anyone up for a wee bit of earwigging a conversation or two?
link to tinyurl.com
I know which one I would want to see. Let’s face it the interview with Alex Salmond will more than likely be “sold out” don’t think you can say the same for Alistair Darling’s event though. 🙂
Onwards
The only difference advertising in tabloids would make is if we sponsored Rangers or Celtic.
Oops!
link to tinyurl.com
YES are trailing NO in the polls. Aye right and pigs are flying past my window as I type this. Does my head zip up the back? 😛
Not sure if Darling will still be up for a lecture at Dundee if the UKOKs have dumped him.
Hmmm..sponsor a team?
The new footie season starts in August.
It would be like a Daily sponsoring a team so wouldn’t breach rules.
Time for a new crowd funding Stu.
LA
Another belter.
Got to say,that’s the way it’s going.How many can BT muster for one of their events?
10% just?
These adverts are aimed purely at the ignorant voter (that’s ‘ignorant’, not ‘stupid’–there’s a big difference). Scare enough ignorant voters with this utter guff into voting No–job done.
It’s not about the truth, people–and they don’t give a hee-haw about how many they deceive with their pish. It’s just about getting their vote by any downright dirty means that they can.
And the ignorant voter won’t even know they’ve been had. It’s all just a game to the No campaign. Scare enough to win the day. Simples.
O.K. folks so you want some passion put into the YES campaign, well IK think I’ve found just the person to do the job. 😛
link to tinyurl.com
I did read a tweet over the weekend goldenayr from none other than David Mundell himself that they were launching Better together in Carluke. The best bit was a follow up tweet from a YES supporter who tweeted that there were 30 at the launch and at least 10 were YES Supporters. In all probability there were probably more just not known to the guy who tweeted. 🙂
LA
Loved the link to “chunky mark”.
Now if he could make himself coherent his passion could spread.
Where’s the Queens Park Club?
Re the BT events.Any I go to here,which I
I think the Queen’s Park club will be in Glasgow cause he says he’s getting ready to go up to Glasgow. I would hazard a guess that it must be in the vicinity of Hampden or Lesser Hampden cause that’s where Queen’s Park play their football. There again what the hell do I know I’m down in the Borders. 😛
Seems there will be good news for us re last night’s big Kilmarnock gig – audience was polled before and after – ‘big swing to Yes’.
I was there, watching them go in, and they looked mostly ‘Yes’ anyway, so the DKs and No’s are doing a good job of pretending otherwise as they go in.
Let’s see what kind of a turnout Galloway (with Brian Wilson, maybe, as support?) gets tomorrow night in the same venue.
Will he get anywhere near 400?
Apologies
Hit the wrong key.
Anyhoos,you go to a BT event here[not a lot] and there’s an old couple in tweeds and everyone else is YES.
o/t but I think we are far enough in now. I have been without proper internet this week and been forced to use BT wifi, the starting page for this is their own branded google page.
I wanted to get to my silly wee web page and make an update, on entering the web address I got this returned: link to i.imgur.com . ooh scary 😉
Patrician
And you think they chose “Better Together”[BT] by accident?
Who do you think GCHQ gets their info from?
Lesley, there’s a guy in the Borders making these things and he’s taking orders. Different grades of plywood and do you want it hinged for transit. He’s also prepared to supply the template to get even more made.
We’ve been discussing how many and where and what colour and how long should we leave them out for and who’s going to paint them and repaint them and repair them when UKOK vandalise them. Hopefully we’ll get quite a few out.
I love the one with the lit-up silhouette! I wonder if that’s actually the guy who’s making them?
Ian Brotherhood
400?
He’ll get a..
“Who he,oh CBB,IACGMOOH..right this’ll be worth a laugh.”
So maybe 10.
Morag the guy who is making these 50 or so YES signs is a guy called Calum Kerr.
link to tinyurl.com
If you go a wee bit down his Twitter page he has a photo of about 9 in various stages of completion. 🙂
Steady on there goldenayr, it won’t be 10 it will be 11 you forgot to count in Brian Wilson in the audience. 😛
Anyone who is *ahem* concerned about the future head of the Better Together campaign can breathe a deep sigh of relief. A replacement has been found. Well at least as far as the Daily Mail is concerned.
Apparently the man who fell, sorry saved, the world is to be drafted in to save the union.
link to tinyurl.com
As everyone else has been saying, I wonder if he’ll repay the stolen pensions and stolen money from the National Lottery or will these *ahem* little things just slip his mind!
Why do they tell us that they like knitting or have a daughter? What possible relevance does their knitting habits have on the referendum or the validity of their claims for what is best for a nation?
LA
I was counting Brian,his five minders,Galloway,the man at the door and the two to stack the chairs after they left. :-]
Theres a guy in the western isle stornoway i think who makes big yes signs dont know his contact details but yes aberdeen do i know this nae use for borders but other areas mught use him
On the issue of borders, I just got back from a lovely weekend in the south of Germany. I was staying with a rather lovely woman in Konstanz. I flew from Edinburgh into Basel – a Swiss airport in the French town of Mulhouse. We went outside (to France) for a cigarette then back into Switzerland before driving out through France and passing the few hundred metres back into Switzerland. After lunch – Italian, paid for in Swiss francs – we drove back to Germany. There is literally no gap between the towns of Konstanz (in Germany) and the neighbouring Swiss town of Kreuzlingen; there is only a small border post (it’s a bit like a tollbooth on a bridge but it’s in the middle of the main street, there’s no barrier and it’s only ever manned on the first weekend of the month when the Swiss have just been paid and swoop across the border to go shopping in the cheaper German shops.)
On Saturday we went on an adventure. It was gloriously sunny so I didn’t take my heavy Scottish winter coat with me. That was unfortunate. Our plan was to visit four different countries in one day and my passport was still in my coat pocket. We were already over the border into Switzerland before we realised. We stopped in the beautiful city of Chur. It’s a very old city, carved into the side of the mountain. Facing it across the valley are some glorious crags covered in thick deciduous forest. Behind those are awesome jagged shards of mountain, all with heavy snow cover on the peaks. I grew up on the edge of the Trossachs and all I kept thinking was “this is what the Trossachs wants to be when it grows up.”
After a stroll round the town whereupon I was shown the best bars and clubs in this, the town where my friend comes when she wants a big night out, writing postcards to my niece and nephew (bought with Swiss francs again, from the second purse my friend always carries) and a quick local beer (ditto for the money, and it’s called Calanda – delicious) we headed back through Heidiland (yes, really, and yes, there’s a hotel, tourist spot and themed autobahn service station) and then disappeared off into the hills. Again, it felt like familiar countryside – winding along the steep hillsides, through villages and forests and eventually on to single track roads, I was reminded of the drive from Callander to Aberfoyle over the Duke’s Pass then on up to Kinlochard and Inversnaid. Except instead of Inversnaid and Loch Lomond, we came to a large military base and a huge wall with a narrow gate where the road passes through. This was the border with the Grand Duchy of Liechtenstein. Please God, don’t let me get stopped at the border of a non-EU country without my passport!
I had little to worry about. Our biggest danger came from an Austrian car coming in the other direction in the gap between what is actually two walls at the border, with a shadowy no-man’s land inbetween. We then entered Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. It’s a small town with a handful of shops, some car dealerships, a few swanky hotels, a little light industry and a lot of construction, and of course some very large, very shiny banks. We stopped at a picnic spot on the edge of town for lunch and as I watched the burbling stream beside us and looked up at the duke’s palace on the crags, I again felt at home. Apologies to those who don’t know the Trossachs, but I can’t think of a more apt comparison; Vaduz is Callander cubed.
After posting another postcard to the neblings, we took off again. We slipped back into Switzerland by another route – you just can’t be too careful. We then cruised back out in another direction, now entering Austria. The border is a river, flowing into Lake Constance a.k.a. die Bodensee. Sadly, the bridge is on a highway so we couldn’t snap a pic at the border in the middle of the river, nor even at the unmanned border post on the other side. Apparently Austrians are all weird and rude and have horrible accents. This vicious, vitriolic, anti-Austrian bile of my German companion evoked Nationalist images that are too awful to contemplate. I take people in good faith though, and I tried to believe that these micro-aggressive comments by my friend were nothing more than good-natured joshing and I believe I was proved right when we realised we were too late to buy an Austrian postcard as all the shops shut at five and it was now past six, but a charming girl in a hotel in Bregenz pointed us to another hotel where she knew they sold stamps and postcards. I duly popped in (alone) and despite having no German, was able to converse freely with the very friendly receptionist in her excellent English. (Seriously folks – learn a language. It’s just polite.) She even took them to post for me. We then sat by the edge of the lake and admired the opera stage built on stilts in the water and looked across the vast rxpanse of water towards both Switzerland and Germany. I asked if there were borders marked on the lake. It seems that on maps, there are. There are no buoys that anyone knows about though, no patrol boats, and no passport checks on the gigantic tourist ferries that sail the 8 hours across the lake, back and forth in and out of the EU.
We then wended our way back through Switzerland, then hugged the edge of the pake all the way back into Germany. Six border crossings through four countries, in and out of the EU repeatedly, in one day without even carrying my passport.
On Sunday, we stayed in Konstanz all day. The budding permaculturist in me was fascinated to learn about the construction of those typical Alpine buildings with the criss-crossing wooden frames. The material between the beams is a mixture of manure, straw and flour. You can scratch it away on many buildings, but it can always be easily repaired and replaced using freely available, renewable local resources. My Protestant friend accompanied me to mass and we discussed the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities across that part of Europe. Historically, Konstanz was a key trading centre for Germans reaching out to Switzerland, Austria and especially Italy via the lake and was the site of the only papal conclave outside Italy. There are tensions between and within the states and cantons of Germany and Switzerland. They’re not really violent these days, but it’s within living memory that cantons were split or states merged along and against certain religious lines and those tensions still exist. They still squabble sometimes and have some fierce rivalries, but a sensible distribution of power, especially to more local levels of governance, seems to keep most people fairly comfortable. This is, after all, the richest area in Germany and the permaculture mindset tells me that boundaries are where the most intense growth occurs, as the contrast between systems promotes extraordinary activity. We also talked about football. If Germany get put out of the World Cup, my friend will definitely be supporting Not Holland and Not Italy, though not really Not England. England aren’t that big a worry, really.
On Monday morning we went to downtown Konstanz to buy souvenirs and send final postcards to the neblings. The souvenir shop didn’t open ’til 10 though, so we killed an hour by strolling through the park on the edge of the lake. Eventually we came to the border with Switzerland. There is no fence. Indeed, since I couldn’t read the German on the tiny signs and didn’t notice the narrow strip of stone at my feet, I could have walked right out of the European Union without even noticing. As it was, my friend filmed me twirling round a pole, dancing in and out of the overweening domination of German economic might a dozen times in as many seconds. Just yards away (and we commented on how I still talk in imperial measurements, despite having learned everything at school in the much more sensible metric system) on the Swiss side lies an ice rink. My friend’s daughter used to go skating there with her school. There had been some debate at the time about whether the kids would need ID cards -they rarely have their own – but in the end they didn’t need to consider it. The border in the park is completely unmanned, so the kids just walked across.
We took off again and stopped for petrol just over the Swiss border. I think it’s cheaper there. I noticed that the tills all show prices in both Swiss francs and euros. Shops without swanky new tills just have a calculator and a poster with today’s exchange rate. You pay in either and get change back in the local currency. Incidentally, I have change in Irish, Austrian and German euros. We drove on back through Switzerland to the Swiss airport in France. As it turns out, it’s actually only half-Swiss, so we popped through the big sliding glass doors to the French section, where I sent postcards from the fifth and final country of the trip. Then we went back to Switzerland, said our goodbyes and I boarded the plane back home. The woman next to me recognised me – we’d been in the same row on the flight out. We discussed our experiences. She told me how she’d visited friends in Alsace and hsd delicious Franco-German food in one of the many German-named towns in that part of France. I spoke of my whirlwind trip and how it had made me reflect on the ridiculous worries over a border between rUK and iScotland. She asked how I was voting and I told her Yes. She said she was a No. I asked why. She told me her brother works for the FCO and she’s worried about getting a new passport and not having embassies anywhere.
I tried, OK?
On the ground in Edinburgh, with five times the number of staff on duty as at Basel, I waited ten times as long to clear passport control, as the only person who examined mt passport for more than ten seconds over the whole trip (including making md remove my glasses to compare me to my picture) was that guy in Edinburgh.
I got a bus back to Glasgow and after sending a postcard to my friend’s kids, I hopped on the subway home. There I met a charming young woman who smiled warmly at me and said “I like your badge.” She turned her bag to show me her own Yes badge and we talked about what I’d been up to and how silly some people’s worries are. I noted that those words “I like your badge” have sparked off some of the most interesting and engaging conversations I’ve had over the past few months. Maybe we should try saying it to anyone we see with a Better Together pin. They could probably go a friendly smile and a blether.
Tl;dr version: borders are bullshit. Have no fear.
And LA
Even BT know how toxic MacAvity is.He couldn’t fill a hall in his own constituency with his pensions guff.
Wee
Kenny
The Alps will be the Trossachs when they grow up.
If you’re going to do travelogues,minutiae is important.
Hmmm..only half my post to LA got through!
To finish..
Wee Duggie Alexander is the new Trough Eating,Ermine Trailing heir apparent.Otherwise known as TEET.
Goldenayr – True enough. 😀
Kenny
Respect.
Interesting thing I’ve noticed recently.Once upon a year ago,when the newspapers released their online version at midnight[or thereabouts].There would be a tumultuous clamouring and braying,by the no lot,as to how the headline vindicated their position.
Getting hacked off with this,getting halfway through a post and it sends.Thought it was me at first hitting the wrong key..but it’s not.
Anyhoos,to continue.
Now the next days headlines come out,there’s a halfhearted reposting of earlier stuff by the BT trolls and then nothing.
All their activity is definitely confined to 9-5.
Have they conceded defeat?..Nah,they’ve run out of money to pay them.
Not that long ago I could’ve sat 24/7 countering their posts and told you when the shift change was coming.Not anymore,come dinnertime the only ones left justifying their stance are the poor utterly delusional souls who don’t know what the argument is.
Yeah us!
BT have given up on fighting their corner on many sites.
Kenny
Well done that is an epic post!!!
I’m taken aback each time I read these pieces. Do these people never seek out the facts before they open their mouths? It’s all rhetoric. No explanation , no facts just I don’t like Nats and Oh What a Lovely War!
Really good piece by the way !
“The Daily Record will lose more readers”
Have they any left? Ever since this once-great newspaper decided that the only way to compete with The Sun was to join it in the gutter, it’s been downhill all the way.
Just saw the Daily Heil headline about Darling being sidelined. Im sure its a tactic to avoid him having to debate as there are two years of lies and misinformation he would be confronted with, and which our ”trusted” media have let him spout unchallenged.
It would be very uncomfortable for the both if they were exposed.
According to the Herald and Bertie Armstrong
In a speech in Bruges last month the First Minister said foreign boats would be denied access to Scottish waters “and as a consequence their access to Norwegian waters” if an independent Scotland failed to negotiate swift EU membership on favourable terms.
(But he actually didn’t say that did he!)
This morning the same Mr Armstrong was on Radio GMS about 06:15hrs trying , not very successfully, to cause trouble for the SG.
Moaning about getting a raw deal in previous EU negotiations by UK and then saying that the SG shouldn’t rock the boat and in the same sentence asking for a better deal. Even the interviewer seemed bemused!
Back to bed for me…Insomnia… I’ll be counting fish now trying to get to sleep, no work to go to today…zzzzzzz!
Kenzie, according to the last ABCs, the Daily Record was one of the biggest declining newspapers in Scotland – sales down 9.8% in a year.
Re Mark the Artist Taxi Driver
His venue is the “Queen’s Park Railway Club” which, despite its name, is not a club for railwaymen. It is a couple of rooms in Queen’s Park Station that are used for small art displays and the like.