The quality of mercy
Let’s just deal with this quickly.
Because the truth is that we should all be quietly sending BBC Scotland bouquets in appreciation for doing the independence movement a favour for once.
Belief in an independent Scotland IS as strong as ever, which is to say it’s pretty much where it’s been since 2014 – two or three points either side of 50%. But while true, that fact certainly WASN’T demonstrated by last Saturday’s pathetic march and cursory “rally”, which at the very, very highest estimate was attended by something less than a twentieth as many people as used to regularly show up at such events.
“We are the 45”, a performer sang at one point to a crowd which numbered only slightly more than that.
“With strength in numbers, Scotland shall prevail”, he continued, leading any rational observer to conclude that Scotland’s chances of prevailing must be roughly on a par with those of our capturing the World Cup in America this summer.
The march was the latest in a series of similar embarrassments, which would have attracted nothing but mockery and pity if broadcast on the evening news. What it demonstrated was that the roughly 50% of people who support independence are as actively committed to making it happen as the roughly 50% of people who want to bring back hanging and the roughly 50% who want to get rid of Trident, two things which are just as far away from the current political agenda.
This is an extraordinary misunderstanding of news values from someone who used to be the editor of a national newspaper. The march was announced seven months ago, has been relentlessly promoted since then, was officially supported by the SNP (which the 100,000+ AUOB marches never were), took place in the runup to an election and featured the First Minister as its headline speaker AND STILL ALMOST NOBODY BOTHERED TURNING UP.
That’s the only thing even remotely and tentatively approaching being a news story here: Widely Promoted Event About Supposedly Incredibly Vital And Urgent Subject Supported By Half The Population And Government Party Who Will Win Imminent General Election Attracts Comically Low Attendance.
We should be weeping with gratitude that the BBC didn’t run that story. Even the march organiser didn’t show up, and nor did most of the SNP, who were focused on keeping their members on the gravy bus come May.
Breaking: 3,000 people mooching down the High Street for an hour and half of them climbing Calton Hill to listen to a desultory handful of awful speeches for another 45 minutes is NOT, in fact, “more than enough” to end the British state’s 300-year control of Scotland. (If it was, obviously, we’d have been independent by Monday.)
Once again: if it had really had the potential to do that, why didn’t more people turn up? At least 1.6 million Scots support independence. Yet fewer than two out of every thousand of them could be arsed with getting a bus or train to the nation’s capital on a bright sunny day to register their interest and have a nice social day out.
Not even SNP supporters think independence is on the political agenda.
And nor do they much care. Independence is not even in SNP voters’ top three priorities, because even people so dumb they’re still voting SNP know that the SNP have neither a strategy nor any motivation for achieving independence. The SNP’s interests lie entirely in maintaining the status quo, as the party’s last former CEO accidentally pointed out in The Courier this week.
And even if the SNP did want independence, we know how it goes by now.
[SNP wins election]
SNP: “We demand another referendum!”
UK GOVERNMENT: “No.”
SNP: “Okay then! See you in another five years!”
More to the point, Richard Walker knows that too. In the article, he just comes right out and says “We should deploy this strategy even though we know it won’t work and when it doesn’t work everything will be over”.
For the sake of brevity we’ll draw a veil over some of the more farcically ludicrous passages in the article. But the line below merits a brief mention, because it’s either a breathtakingly audacious lie or self-delusion on level that in less enlightened times would have seen someone put in a jacket whose arms fastened round the back:
Because on the evidence of last Saturday, the biggest favour UK media can possibly do the independence movement right now is to not draw attention to what a pitiful, withered, irrelevant and impotent state it’s in.
Richard Walker and co are are entirely deluded and have been totally deceived by the myth making primary independence industry vehicle of Make Believe in Scotland.
It’s not winning the World cup that matters it’s taking part in the tournament.
The might have beens, The could have dones, The if onlys, Did you see that Ref! Then the celebration of being knocked out.
Wouldn’t miss it for the World.
Mark Beggan @ 13.24.
The World Cup is sport, Mark, so it’s arguable that it’s not winning or losing, but how we play the game. Or even, just being there.
Independence for the country of our birth or choice affects every aspect of our lives and those of our children. Just look at how well our country was run (within the limits imposed by a devolved administration) during the period 2007-2014. No wonder there was such a mood of optimism and belief in ourselves as we realised that with a competent and decent administration we’re not too wee, too failing, too lacking in natural enterprise and resources to successfully take care of ourselves.
Spot on!
There was a time when we could be confident that the leadership believed in Scotland and worked for the country and its people rather than just taking a ride on the gravy train. It all slipped away when Alex Salmond resigned.
Just to be there. Oh yes. Just to be there.
2007-2014. They all resigned knowing what they were leaving Scotland with. Woke Globalisation, post colonial, gender bender lefty rant. And they’re still screaming like bitches on heat. Not good coming from men. Not good at all.
Trump changed all that.
The evidence shows that the 1 . 6 million people whom support Scottish independence are not attached to the political parties or main stream routes, knowing that they are all promises of carrots for breakfast dinner and tea,
1.6 million out of such a small Country of people with no actual leader for independence are actually good statistics.
It depends how the stats are viewed. Or dismissed.
As far as I can ascertain from your post and stats it relays the information that the independence movement is and alway will come from the people first and foremost, and that mainstream political parties are not in sync with the people of Scotland.
As was always the case,
After over three hundred years of false hoods and politics the minds of those awake in Scotland are not going to change and have not changed.
Inspiring people of Scotland to realise instead they are free and remained free and independent since 1707 and documented records is the truth that should be asserted. To improve the grass movement attendence,
The Greeks remember the part Scottish George Gordon Byron as the man who made them take the idea of independence from the Ottomans seriously.
It may need something of the kind to get the Scots to think seriously about the matter.
Amateurism in politics is like a blunt knife in a kitchen, pointless.
We are getting there though, to a starting point, that is. As soon as this generation of SNP Politicians are out of the way, including their anodyne inbred successors, then just maybe a start can begin with engaging the Scottish public.
These politicians really are all seriously delusional though, when turn-outs are compared with that of approximately two million people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1989 formed the “Baltic Way” (or Baltic Chain), a 675-kilometer human chain connecting Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius to protest Soviet occupation. TWO FUCKING MILLION PEOPLE! That’s the bar. Thats about 1 in 3 people! And these arseholes are shouting about 1 in 500! Get in the sea!
Spot on!
There was a time when we could be confident that the leadership believed in Scotland and worked for the people and the betterment of the country rather than a personal seat on the gravy train.
It all went south (literally) after Alex Salmond resigned. The damage done since to people’s expectations of what leadership should be and any hopes on statehood restored to Scotland is immeasureable.
“Control” over events and marches has been wrested from grassroots’ enthusiasm and organisation and turned into a business and personal promotion venture.
Why would the BBC report on a Indy march? The BBC knows the SNP and believe in Scotland have no interest in Scottish Independence at all, its just a con.
I went on my fair share of AUOB marches and foreign media used to report on these marches, they just don’t do it anymore, WHY? Because the SNP isn’t seeking Independence not now not after the election and certainly not in 2031 or beyond.
The SNP doesn’t want Independence the party isn’t even bothered about the people of Scotland their not even bothered about the values the SNP used to hold dear. But what the SNP will say is two votes for the SNP will win Independence and will allow us to go to Westminster and ask the PM for a section 30 order which he can’t deny, Yes he will and by voting SNP 1 and 2 will allow Reform to win over 20+ seats which will result in the closure of Holyrood so the SNP isn’t even bothered about devolution either because if they where they wouldn’t be telly you to vote for the SNP with your second vote and they are and they also know what will happen when you do.
I don’t think that the 50% of the population who support independence aren’t committed to it being delivered. I think that they KNOW that the SNP isn’t committed to it anymore. Or at least the high heid yins aren’t. The gravy train is far too good to them to allow risking it by confronting the British state. Or the kompromat or both! So why would you waste a rare sunny afternoon on this charade then?
“And nor do they much care.”
I think they do care, but since many more now realise the SNP have no strategy or even interest they understandably turn to issues like cost of living. At least there is a chance something MIGHT be done about that.
Smaller parties were formed because politically informed independence supporters realised that SNP were compromised. Other routes like Salvo/Liberation were set up for the same reason. The fact that have had little success electorally or in Salvo’s case are widely unknown is imho more worrying than folk giving a Believe of Folding Money event a miss…
« I remember him [José Bergamín (Pepe)] saying to me one day that he had realized the Spanish people had died before him and that this was the most tragic moment of his entire life. To survive one’s own people — this is our condition, but it is perhaps also the extreme poetic condition. […] He was like a breeze or a cloud or a smile — absolutely present but never constrained to an identity (this is why the condition of official nonexistence that the Spanish government forced upon him by depriving him of his documents suited and amused him. » (pp 57, 58)
(Giorgio Agamben, ‘Self-Portrait in the Studio’, 2024)
The recent “Believe in Scotland” pretence at showing support for Scottish independence was never going to fool most of the *2.51 million Scots who actually do support the return of Scotland to a self-governing soverane natioun.
One of the gigantic clues exposing the fraud of BiS’s ‘march for freedom’ is the fact that Swinney turned up to show the SNP’s support for BiS’s bullshit.
Logic tells us that the SNP, being Westminster’s creature, would never support a genuine independence march and rally – which is most likely why indigenous independence supporting Scots, and the Independence movement entire, stayed well clear of this one.
This from The National newspaper:
And this from the Scottish Government’s website:
*53% of the total number of Scots (that’s 2.51 million) living in Scotland (4.74 million) support Scottish independence according to the Norstat survey.
I suspect the real percentage of Scots who support Scotland’s liberation from English oppression is closer to 60% or higher based on the number of Scots who identify as Scots only.
Anyway, Believe in Scotland is a business driven, Scotland exploiting business creation with formal ties to the SNP… that should tell folk all they need to know about Believe in Scotland’s far from believable support for Scottish independence.
I think it’s safe to say that any organisation, movement or group supported by the SNP is no friend to Scotland.