The rules of the game
I’m already sick of all this rubbish about “gaming the system”.
When Labour set up the Scottish Parliament in 1999 they could have expected eternal rule if they’d based it on First Past The Post like the UK Parliament, but the Lib Dems insisted on PR as their price for co-operation and the appearance of consensus.
So between them they put together the AMS system (although virtually any PR system would probably have done much the same thing) which would ensure, they believed, that the SNP would never hold power alone, and would therefore never be able to use the parliament as a vehicle to deliver independence.
That meant Labour sharing power with the Lib Dems, but was seen as probably being actually better than FPTP in the long run because it would (they thought) guard against the remote possibility that the SNP became so popular that FPTP started to work in its favour, as it does dramatically when you reach the tipping point of anything very much over 40% of the vote.
They even set it up with more constituency seats than list seats, which at the time also disadvantaged the SNP because a party whose support is evenly spread out (like the SNP) will usually be relying more on list seats while a party with concentrated urban heartlands (like Labour at the time) will get more constituencies.
There were four parties with significant support – three Unionist and the SNP. If no one party could govern alone, then the SNP would never be able to govern without a Unionist coalition partner even if it did manage to be the largest party. Independence would be duly stymied. They thought. But the Lib Dems didn’t stick to that plan in 2007, when they probably believed the SNP wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway with such a tiny majority.
In terms of delivering a referendum they were right. But nobody (except perhaps Alex Salmond) envisaged the surge in popularity that followed the SNP’s then-competent performance in government, or the utter fluke of 2011 when all the cards fell just right and the SNP broke the system with a narrow one-party majority. Unfortunately that didn’t lead to independence, so we got to where we are.
The chances of another 2011 fluke are remote. In 2016 the SNP got almost quarter of a million MORE votes than they did in 2011, but still lost their majority. Yet having done it once, it seems to have become accepted that the SNP needs to do it again to get a “real” mandate – including, insanely, by the SNP.
Not achieving an overall majority in a parliament purposely designed not to deliver overall majorities isn’t a failure, but the SNP has now largely capitulated to the “you lost your majority so you have no mandate” mantra, except in the occasional moments of panic when it suddenly changes its tune and says that any pro-indy majority will do.
The real flaw in the system is the lack of a second independence-supporting party with more credibility and a wider voter appeal than the Greens: a pro-indy Lib Dems to the SNP’s Labour, if you will.
That is to say, the SNP needs a credible coalition partner that won’t spend its time trying to undermine the SNP’s primary reason for existence (as the Lib Dems would have done had they gone into coalition with the SNP in 2007).
But the Greens are social and economic extremists quite properly regarded as a nutter fringe by most voters, and whose commitment to independence is lukewarm and largely opportunist anyway (the party didn’t so much as mention the constitution in a manifesto until 2007, and that was on page 24 out of 25), so the SNP has in practice had to carry the burden alone.
Fixing that isn’t gaming the system, it’s using the system as it was always meant to be used – to give the voters a choice of parties with a range of reasonable and sensible policies on various issues, and then for a coalition to be formed between the parties the voters overall have preferred, without ever concentrating too much power into a single one on a minority of the vote, which is the key failing of FPTP.
We’ve forgotten about this because there’s only ever been one credible independence-supporting party, and because of its monopoly on the policy it actually succeeded in capturing enough of the vote to almost break through all the roadblocks that the UK had put in place to stop devolution ever turning into independence.
(And unfortunately in the process it acquired a toxic hubris that seems to equate its monopoly of support for independence with a licence to force through a raft of wildly unpopular policies that nobody, not even the party’s own members, ever voted for.)
But the whole system is structured against that, so for as long as the constitution is the defining facet of Scottish politics – something which is now basically a permanent feature and will remain so until either independence happens or support for it collapses like it did in Quebec – Holyrood will only work as designed when there’s more than one credible and moderate independence-supporting party for voters to choose from.
And for that reason, whatever else happens, success for the Alba Party would be to the ultimate benefit of the balance of Scottish politics as a whole.
For “Gaming The System” read:
An informed and educated electorate who understand how the voting system works, and who have organised to maximise their voice in a democratic, peaceful and lawful manner.
Anyone who has a problem with the above should alarm you.
I’m a supporter of Scottish independence, always have been.
I literally don’t care how (excluding violence), or with who (corrupt politicians or not), we achieve it … so the whole idea of the Alba party helping to achieve a “supermajority” etc etc sounds great, promising, a breath of fresh ‘n aw that…
… however …
When, after the May election, the SNP share of the vote is greatly reduced (which it now certainly will be …) and there are perhaps a handful of ALBA MSPs sitting (looking at this optimistically), plus maybe a couple more unionist MSPs due to lost SNP seats … what’s the plan exactly? Or … assuming there is a massive indy majority … still, then what? How is this going to suddenly change the minds of the government in Westminster to “allow” us to have a referendum? The UK, Tory government back in 2014 almost sh*t themselves when they realized how close they had come to causing the break up of the union, and if you can be sure of one thing it’s that they will never allow that to happen again, no matter how bad it looks, whether it’s immoral to deny a majority their right, whether they piss off millions of voters. I just don’t see how this hoped for result of the May election is suddenly going to change this.
Someone enlighten me ……
So if we’re all members of the Alba Party and therefore want to vote Alba on the regional list ballot, then Nicola Sturgeon won’t want us to vote SNP on the Constituency ballot because that somehow wouldn’t be fair?
Are you sure about that, Nicola?
Really, if Scotland was in any way a normal country, the ideal scenario would have been that in 2007 the Lib Dems went into coalition with the SNP to deliver *their* stated manifesto aim of full fiscal autonomy. I’m pretty sure the SNP of the time could have got behind that and those parties, along with the greens, run a competent administration which truly brought more powers to Scotland.
Instead, 2007 was the year voters really saw the reality of unionism: three London based parties ganging up on the Scottish party we’d given most votes to, in an attempt to make governance impossible.
Once 2011 happened, again, Labour and the Lib Dems should have begun a shift, swung behind a properly set out demo max or FFA, which could easily have achieved a vast majority and had support from a lot of the media as well. Again, they made the same mistake of becoming the Better Together coalition, 3 London based parties dictating to Scots what we could and couldn’t have, project fear, doing down Scotland, abusing the voters.
Post Brexit, all those parties had yet another – final – chance to recognise the UK landscape had utterly changed, and that Scotland had changed irrevocably since 1999. A new generation which has grown up with devolution sees independence as normal, and support for independence is now up above 50%.
A normal county with parties embedded in, and run from, that country would have seen a shift in those parties away from all having one common position of: No second referendum; stay with the UK; stick with Brexit. Had we been going into this election with the Scottish Lib Dems, say, also pro independence and Labour not taking a pro or anti stance but being pro a second referendum and allowing members and elected representatives a free stance, there would be no need for Alba at all.
I just got rid of the last indy page I was following on Facebook. 3 anti Alba party articles written by unionist media and just utter bile in the comments. I think it’s SNP supporters that will cost us indy if we ever get another referendum.
Yes. Absolutely right. More and more the SNP are turning into Labour. Deny deny deny. Repeat over and over what you WANT to be true, and no regard for the consequences.
I have no doubt they already have the “post-match analysis” written, and it will be all Alba’s fault.
I’m sick of it too. It is actually borne from the same entitlement we see spewing forth in everything Sturgeon and her cronies say and do.
Their misconception is that everyone who votes SNP on the constituency ballot is a natural SNP voter. WRONG.
Many people vote SNP on the constituency because there is no other pro-indy candidate or there is no chance of another pro-indy candidate winning. It is the reason why the SNP list vote is always lower than the constituency vote.
The constituency ballot is also ‘confused’ through the incumbency of individual candidates, where a sitting MSP will benefit because they have provided some assistance to individual constituents during their time in office.
The list vote is therefore a much better measure of ‘pure’ voting intentions. Everybody can vote for their preferred party, knowing there is a relatively low threshold to get an MSP elected.
The gaming of the system is therefore Green or Alba list voters deciding to vote for an SNP candidate on the constituency ballot.
Does Nicola really want these games to stop? I think we should be told.
Gaming the system is Sturgeon code for being completely outmanoeuvred by AS and she’s deeply panicking.
It’s bad enough when Yoons talk about gaming the system. When our own people like Lesley Riddoch start talking about it. You have to wonder who’s side they are on. Surely trying to be fair to unionists is an oxymoron.
Nicola’s plan is to so piss off ALBA supporters that they will not vote SNP 1. Thus, list SNP msps displace ALBA msps. And those list SNP candidates are horrors.
Don’t fall for it: the more SNP constituency wins, the more ALBA list wins.
SNP 1, ALBA 2.
How about Unionists gaming the system with a BritNat Media monopoly relentlessly indoctrinating the population with their skewed, anti-Independence, rhetoric and propaganda? From cheap smears against personalities, to hand picked audiences with a rigged agenda, where is the parity in Broadcasting? Does that not qualify as gaming the system to influence election results?
IF pro Independence parties can coordinate their supporters to maximum effect, and span two party agendas in doing so, then the Unionist parties, need only settle their differences and do likewise, (indeed, as they already did under the Better Together umbrella), for the List Seat phenomenon to be nullified.
ALBA is merely challenging them to do precisely that. The Unionist Parties are just too lazy and lethargic about rising to a challenge, or finding common purpose. It’s much easier for them to simply cry “cheat” and let the BritNat media take up and repeat the refrain ad nauseam that we are ‘gaming the system”.
@de brus 12.55pm
Reposted my response below to your identical comment on the earlier thread “To the National secretary”:
Having > 2/3 of Holyrood seats held by pro-indy parties would allow them to call fresh Holyrood elections. Logically therefore, when Boris says “now is not the time” again to S30 Order request (which he inevitably will), the SNP will have nowhere to hide. Either they back down and are exposed as a busted flush devolutionary party, or they announce beforehand that if Westminster refuse to cooperate with #indyref2 on the same terms as #indyref1, they will call new Holyrood elections and stand on a specific plebiscitary platform. A victory in that election would be taken as de facto independence. Simples.
Of course whether the milquetoast nationalists around Sturgeon have the political chops to do it is open to question. With luck the few remaining grown ups in the party will politically defenestrate her and he odious cabal before it is altogether too late to save their party.
Simply put, I wasn’t going to Vote SNP 1 till Alba came along. I’m happy to hold my nose now and vote for them, as I know my 2nd vote will count.
There is a very plausible argument that the when the Scottish Socialist Party stood on the list and won six seats, they were the “real” socialist party, its supporters believing that the Labour Party had sold out its socialist credentials with Tony Blair. Does that sound familiar? Just substitute the SNP and Alba Party and insert independence for the word socialism. Who was gaming the system then? You use what is front of you. Indignant claims that it’s “cheating” are just so much horseshit – what political party doesn’t take every electoral opportunity that comes its way? And that includes you, Willie Rennie, in all your squeaky self-righteousness.
Was trying to think on why the SNP although happy for the Greens to get their second vote really do have a problem with the new Alba party. I can’t imagine it’s just that it’s led by Mr Salmond.
The Alba party, as with the majority of parties in Scotland are women’s rights focused and I’d be very surprised if there is anything in the manifesto specially focused on men and boys.
Neither party has an issue with “trans men are men” and the impact that has on services or that misandry is not included in the new hate crime bill. Although misogyny isn’t included there is going to be an expert group led by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
https://www.gov.scot/groups/misogyny-and-criminal-justice-in-scotland-working-group/
Can’t imagine it will report against inclusion with men being the only group without any legal protection.
If you accept that all three of the parties are pro independence “no laughing at the back” then the only difference seems to be that the SNP are ok with men once they identify as a women whilst the Alba party aren’t.
My last paragraph is taking the piss a bit however with a serious point. As an older white male with two sons there’s bugger all I can see from any of the parties or the wider yes movement to help improve the support they’ll get. And although may not be popular when I get to the “What’s in it for me (and them)” column it’s empty.
Great piece. I hope the Nyah Fearties crowd and political correcto’s inc. Lesley are reading this and thinking again.
Thanks for pointing out (2nd para) that the seat balance is not some evil magic of the wicked D’Hondt system but will happen as long as we have PR. Personally, I am in favour of PR because I believe that everyone deserves representation, even those with whom I disagree.
@AwakeNotWoke
Absolutely correct and very well put.
There are some who go to great lengths (Including the SNP leadership) to ensure that the gullible do not understand the D’Hondt system, as they do not want to be in a position to have to consider pushing for independence. So it is Sturgeon and her buddies that are trying to trick the electorate by keeping them in the dark.
The D’Hondt system has been explained clearly on Wings In the past and also recently on a number of occasions, so that people do understand it.
The Unionists have used this system to their advantage before and will attempt do so again.
I call it tactical voting, happens all the time.
Do you think sturgeon is worrying about going to the pokey ?
If she fails her imperial masters (as I hope) they will throw her to the wolves.
More and more members are waking up to the wokeratti.
Everyone is getting more and more upset with police Scotland as they fail to investigate the missing £600,000.
And as for the electoral commission – we should sue.
But that message is just not getting through, still lots of SNP 1 and 2 online.
I’ve even read a convoluted post (can’t remember from which group) using the Lothian list 2016 results more or less saying if the Greens hadn’t stood then SNP would have got the last list seat (they got none). And lots of peeps sharing this as a reason to vote SNP 1 and 2.
There needs to be a massive education effort on understanding the list system. Peeps are being bamboozled by their own lack of knowledge and misinformation. But it needs to be kept simple – an easy to understand graphic that can be easily shared online and a 2 min infographic based video. C’mon Phantom Power please use your skills to help educate the electorate.
Alba have got off to a great start but I just don’t think some people understand how to maximise their vote.
“…success for the Alba Party would be to the ultimate benefit of the balance of Scottish politics as a whole.”
Unfortunately “ultimate” is one of those words that resonates with the noise of a can being kicked down the road. It speaks of a long term that Scotland doesn’t have.
Scotland’s plight is such that contemplating the future “balance of Scottish politics as a whole” is a luxury we cannot afford. We need the outcome of this election to be a Scottish Government with a powerful mandate to pursue the restoration of Scotland’s independence. Only one party is in a position to be the party of government. And it’s not Alba.
The reality is that Alba’s assistance is only of any real value if it isn’t needed. Nothing Alba might do can set in train the process of restoring independence unless there’s a Scottish Government with the capacity to do this on its own.
The fallacy is supposing all pro-independence MSPs are equal. Very obviously, they are not. MSPs in the governing party count for more than other MSPs in terms of adding weight to the mandate. This must be so given that it is the governing party that holds the mandate. In the British political system, ONLY the party of government matters at all. It’s winner take all. One party rules. (Other than in the very rare case of a coalition. Which is two parties acting as one.)
Alba MSPs will not count towards the mandate for a referendum. Or they won’t count as much as SNP MSPs. In the eyes of the British government, they won’t count at all. That shouldn’t matter. But it will.
If as many of us suspect, Nicola Sturgeon is going to be looking for an excuse/rationalisation for putting off the referendum yet again then the SNP falling well short of a majority will serve her purposes nicely. She need only cite the same lack of a mandate as the media will be reporting.
“gaming the system” doesn’t mean anything. It’s just self serving pish in lieu of an argument, the verbal equivalent of throwing pocket sand into voters’ eyes and hoping they’re too distracted to see what you’re doing.
It’s like comfortably remunerated MSP’s complaining about “diversity” and “representation”, if the Scottish Parliament was representative on racial/sexual grounds it’d be about 96% white and 98% heterosexual and maybe 0.02% of a trans. Or extremely wealthy and privileged public schoolboy Anas Sarwar informing journos they’re not allowed to ask about his family’s dodgy business practices because that’s racist. (Even by political standards, that was a beezer)
Some people use words to communicate ideas and intentions, others use them like the anglerfish does the dangly glowing thing in front of its ravening jaws. Anybody who cries about “gaming the system” is really telling you they think you’re an idiot who can be easily manipulated by piss poor deflection techniques that wouldn’t fool a cocker spaniel.
Speaking of liars, is Nicola still pals with Alistair Campbell?
Does using independence votes to push your science denying trans agenda count as ‘gaming the system’?
Does turning our parliament into a middle class parlour game count as ‘gaming the system’?
Does encouraging people to vote for land reform, ditching it, and engaging as an advisor the largest feudal land owner’s advisor count as ‘gaming the system’?
Does leading an independence party and yet handing a S30 veto to the UK government count as ‘gaming the system’?
Multiple parties pro union? Absolutely fine.
More than one party pro Independence? OMG CHEATING.
Just read this morning on the BBC that Sturgeon is saying she doesn’t want a super majority.
This is absolute insanity. A so called nationalist leader wanting a weak majority that is unlikely to be achieved. A nationalist leader wanting unionist Conservative and Labours MSP to keep their seats. A SNP leader wanting the new parliament to be denied the powers available to a ‘ super majority ‘ conferred by the 2016 Scotland Act.
Quite frankly, I think voters at large and most of the party will now be utterly aghast of the behaviour of the First Minister and her small coterie of control and to tell you the truth I suspect her days as leader are numbered.
But life will move on, is moving on and voters will vote to deliver the biggest SNP / Alba majority possible. Of that there can be little doubt.
Well said Morag, Received a leaflet from the tories this morning through the post. Ill not repeat most of the crap but the back of it was all about asking labour voters to lend us your vote in the list to stop indy ref 2.
Dont see much from Sturgeon or the MSM about the Tories gaming the system?
I’m at best “indy-curious” and can tell you the best way to get Independence is to change public opinion into a substantial and sustained majority in favour of it. Until then, no Westminster government will ever feel obliged to give in to what would be a demand from a minority, or at best a tiny, transient majority. It also wouldn’t be worth the risk for Indy supporters of having a re-run without such a majority and potentially losing again.
Most people on this site already believe in independence, so you’re preaching to the choir by talking amongst yourselves. To achieve your aim you need to win over people who voted no in 2014, like me. You’ll not do that by denigrating or abusing them, but by engaging sensibly with them, listening to they concerns on matters like currency, EU membership, borders with rUK, impact on pensions, public services, trade and so on and coming up with credible answers. These are all massive concerns for no voters and pretending that they’re not and refusing to address them or even to admit there would be difficulties and trade offs isn’t helping your cause. Nor is repeating messages that don’t stand up to skeptical scrutiny (e.g. “we already print our own money” – I mean, seriously…? You’ve got to do better than that!!)
It won’t be quick easy, but continuing what you’ve done for the last 8 years and simply wishing for it to happen and doing nothing to engage with and convert the 50%+ people of who could make it happen isn’t the way to go.
@ de brus
So you are happy to work with corrupt politicians to get Indy?
I hope most people will disagree strongly with you and that includes the Alba party or are you all so desperate to leave the Union that you will join forces and wheesht for Indy? Would the Alba Party have voted in support of Nicola in the VONC ?
Morag’s article is well written as usual but totally biased. Two parties sharing 99% of their views is maybe not gaming the system but isnt a fair system. The Salmond/Sturgeon SNP from a few years ago is now 2 parties with 2 Cult leaders. Apart from Women’s rights, what makes Alba any different from the SNP or even Greens?
She fails to mention that the SNP didn’t support Devolution and fails to mention Scottish Conservatives at all.
Holyrood should represent all groups in Scotland but is flawed. The voting system needs replaced by an Independent non-biased body without interference from the political parties. It shouldnt favour left or right or Independence/Unionist but genuine representation.
The SNP are shitting bricks because their cosy arrangement with the Greens and their hegemony of Holyrood is suddenly under threat, and they’re too stupid to see it’s from someone on the same ultimate side as them.
The devolved administrations can never be a “vehicle to deliver independence” as that is not within their remit as currently constituted within the various acts of Parliament that set them up.
The nearest they can come is to be a means of expressing, via what amounts to a glorified opinion poll, a desire for part of the UK, currently in this case, administratively recognised as Scotland, whether in whole or in part, to secede therefrom and institute a new nation.
I would take issue with the claim that there has only ever been one credible independence supporting party; who is it? If, as I suspect it’s claimed to be the SNP, that is self evidently not true and has been such for a number of years. Their publicly stated intent is to secede a part of the UK, however much they think they can carry with them, in order to (hopefully) integrate into an expansionist supranational banking & business conglomerate, administered by a sort of up to date version of the Indian Civil Service.
That is not, by any definition, ‘independence’ in the sense of sovereign, discrete, autonomous or any other synonym you may care to cite.
From what I can see, the only vehicle by which the secessionists could achieve what they say they desire, would be via Parliament, by introducing a bill to discuss an act allowing an agreed portion of the UK to be set aside in order to secede with a view to subsuming itself into the EU. However, all that would have to be prepared in advance, with the first thing to be determined being whether there is a genuine, irrefutable need to take this course of action.
Advance agreement from the EU would need to be sought for inclusion – good luck with that! – given the number of countries already seeking accession, as well as the usual other bread & butter issues like currency, type of governance and so forth. I mean, the SNP can’t even decide if they want to retain the monarchy for one thing.
Throw this ‘Alba’ party into the mix and you have yourselves bogged down in definitions and synecdoche as to who truly represents Scotland. The SNP are not Scotland, and the choice of ‘Alba’ is doubly unfortunate, since ‘Alba’ as anyone who has a modicum of historical nous would know, is most certainly not the entirety of Scotland, but that part roughly north & west of the Forth Valley, as granted to the Albany Stewarts in the 14th/15th century. It’s my view that choosing such a title implies a Gaelic nativist outlook, which is unlikely to fly high, other than among the hard of thinking among our countrymen, of which we have loads.
Anyway, it’s a nice sunny afternoon here in the Kingdom, and I’m going outside to have a nice cup of coffee.
PS. Merganser, stop it. You’re just embarrassing yourself.
Queen Nicla wanted to be the woman that delivered Scotland to its restored Independence and be the only name written in history books.
However, she failed to enact on countless mandates and umpteen opportunities because she’s riddled with an impostor syndrome that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and is really, really incapable of choosing her allies and lieutenants and who to pick a fight with.
And now she’s sulking like a toddler that an adult has take the lollipop from.
The scenario she definitely played in her head too many times is now stone dead. Either she accepts that independence will be delivered by a coalition of parties representing the majority of Scots, with a group of leaders at its helm, or forever she be damned.
Sadly, another woman failing at the last hurdle – like Hillary Clinton. Unconvincing, ineffective, weak at the knees.
Failures to break through the glass ceiling – or in this case just to go through an open door! – like these damage women’s opportunities more than any misogyny.
Women don’t have to prove to be better than men.
Good leaders only need to prove to be better than other people.
@Andy Ellis
Posted on here too
Well summarised Stu especially last para but I would add the following caveat to it.
“And for that reason, whatever else happens, success for the Alba Party would be to the ultimate benefit of the balance of Scottish politics AND INDEPENDENCE as a whole.”
OK, so that folk start to appreciate the tactics, this is not accidental from Nicla.
The Britnats cannot allow an Indy Supermajority at Holyrood.
If they cannot stop Alex, then the next, most obvious way to spike it, is to get Nicla to ‘throw the game’ and make the SNP Constituency votes a loser.
For her to continually smear Alex – who does that influence voting wise? A No voter? They never liked Alex anyway.
Someone who has decided to vote for Alex and Max the Yes vote? – unlikely, they’ve done the sums.
Who? oh I know, SNP voters, the ones who are still not prepared to believe Nicla has sold them out… but its likely to be enough to sour them from coming out to vote for anyone. The course of least resistance. No effort needed to face up to some nasty evidence and then do something about it.
We need to identify the SNP Constituency Candidates worth saving. We are going to have to campaign For them, not just vote for them.
And we need to Know. What are the Do’s and Don’ts for Covid Safe Campaigning. MAX THE YES.
@Andy Ellis
Posted on here too as that last post had just gone “out of date” so to speak …
Thanks for taking the time to reply with all of that. I’m not sure it will be that simple, there are a lot of assumptions in that idea as far as I can see. It’s a worry.
Cheers
How dare she talk about tricking our way to independence. Does she think we are dealing with reasonable people? Even if it were the case that we were tricking our way to it – who the f**k cares? Isn;t it what we want in long run anywat?
Excellent piece, Rev. and straight to the heart of the matter. The other point that must be borne in mind for those of an independent mind is that we live in what is termed a ‘mature democracy’, meaning simply that we have had a voting system for a very long time and a voting system for all for quite some time.
All analyses, both here and abroad, suggests that mature democracies rarely are amenable to huge majorities for independence of a part of a mature democracy, and that we cannot expect percentages of 70%, or higher, probably not even of 60% and higher, in a referendum.
Countries that have become released, or released themselves, from either colonial oppressors or repressive regimes, will routinely get such high percentages precisely because they have not been allowed free expression of their electoral democracy or, indeed, had any meaningful voting system at all, having been ruled by party apparatchiks or dictators.
Ergo, we should be bearing in mind that there is a wealth of evidence out there, including the referendum results from Quebec (2), Catalunya, New Caledonia and Scotland, and also including serious psephological and political studies done in France and elsewhere, which show that high percentages for independence in the mature democracies of the world are totally unrealistic. We also need now to inform Unionists that, while they may vote as they choose, they must bear in mind that the UKG is a signatory to the UN Charter and to Human Rights, and that trying to stymie independence is contrary to international law and natural justice. Colonialism, in particular, is ‘persona non grata’ in the 21st century.
We need to arm ourselves with data and evidence, both for our own sakes, and to put a spoke in Unionist anti independence rhetoric and deliberately unrealistic expectations that we must fulfil certain criteria and jump over totally, and deliberately constructed, hurdles of the highest order with the sole intention of thwarting independence.
somerled says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:26 pm
@ de brus
So you are happy to work with corrupt politicians to get Indy?
Yep.
Was everybody sleeping in 2014 when the entire Civil Service, Bank of England, Business, House of Lords, House of Commons, Better Together, The entire media, Dark Money etc etc were deployed against Scotland.
A New Party is registered and we get this crap about the system.
We are to be kind! They can use knuckledusters and steel toecap boots and through dirt in our eyes.
somerled says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:26 pm
So what you want is a glorified community council. We are a country – not a district, We deserve a proper parliament like any other country and that means having different political parties. If people want to stand for independence, it’s up to them, just as it is up to the voters to show which type of parliament they want.
You can’t blame the person who overtook you if you have been half hearted dilly dallying or running things to suit your own agenda.
Time waits for no one.
because she’s riddled with an impostor syndrome
There’s no such thing as imposter syndrome. Anybody who believes they are an imposter probably is one.
In Nicola’s case, she’s completely misdiagnosed herself – it’s not that she mistakenly believes herself unfit for public office because the Patriarchy/Russia/1990’s Yorkie adverts hacked her brain. She’s just incompetent and out of her depth.
Spare us politicians seeking public office as a kind of group therapy for their character flaws. I’ll take a confident, outgoing person with a plan over a neurotic weirdo any day of the week. Conan the Cimmerian never doubted himself, and that’s why he was able to crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women/transwomen.
Be like Conan.
The charge is so ridiculous it falls apart on the most cursory examination. But of course, they know that, they don’t care that it’s false. What they do care about is GAMING THE ELECTORATE. Which is what they are trying to do by implanting the idea that Alba is somehow devious, for the ‘crime’ of wanting independence via a parliamentary route. And in doing so, they reveal their disdain for the voters – there is no other explanation than they assume the voters are incapable of understanding the system and voting accordingly, in the full knowledge that they hope to maximise the independence vote REGARDLESS OF PARTY.
It is crystal clear that the SNP cannot abide the thought that there might be another independence party, and even more one which is more committed than they are, more intelligent and actually has a plan, a strategy and tactics. Something they have never done, because they are simply not that serious about it. Yes, nice idea, they say, but trust us the time isn’t right, we have ask for permission blah blah. And in the meantime you must vote for us, because we have very highly paid jobs and we want to push through policies you haven’t been asked to vote for and on which we won’t consult you.
Basically they want you to vote for a dictatorship, for a party which has jettisoned internal democracy and is basically a handful of powerful people who have hijacked a party in order to enrich themselves while ramming through legislation they are obsessed with, an obsession the electorate do not share. The thought that they might be challenged on this is unbearable to them, so used have they become to dictating policy, along with their patsies in the Crown Office and the police.
Their simultaneous fear and disdain of the electorate is evident throughout all of their panicked and dishonest reactions to Alba and their own declining membership and popularity. Politics is a brutal game at times – they are heading for some brutal results, which will be richly deserved for how brutal they have themselves been to former members and increasingly the electorate.
If they actually had some faith in democracy they would accept the challenges and be fighting the campaign on their record and their manifesto. They are clearly very aware that they are so weak on those fronts, so much so that they prefer not to talk about them, and instead are attempting to use project fear and paranoia to smear and lie about other parties. They are pathetic, intellectually stunted, who by definition are gaming the system by trying to sell voters a completely false version of the current system. Because the poor voters can’t possibly understand it. If they did, they might vote to overturn the SNP, lol.
Dear Rev, Please can you explain to me how Scotland can afford to be independent? From my reading of all the financial implications I fail to see how an aging population & fewer working age population can be burdened with the level of debt that the present Scottish Government have. I worry not for myself but for my children. I am a very proud Scottish Lass who can hold her head up high anywhere in the world but this debacle of Scottish Politics at the moment causes despair.
“Nicola Sturgeon has insisted she wants to win a “simple majority” for the SNP in May’s Holyrood election – rather than the “super majority” for independence her predecessor Alex Salmond is bidding for.”
Oh dear.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nicola-sturgeon-targets-simple-majority-110921449.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGloZ-TtUICF16l-IutFW9KggyOmufgLD9-PWIMBKe2hlkSxO4noK9PfyT5ZtIZeDtMZcgpqlE-DVwihtcDeQRQ1_Q5PO2nrP6elGX_ZBBWoPmlpTTLxxFHU0CVSREfksV_HxkvFA1dKTVaBmao0Ks1Cn9bURuCm7RjuCoiM52a3
“I literally don’t care how (excluding violence), or with who (corrupt politicians or not), we achieve it … so the whole idea of the Alba party helping to achieve a “supermajority” etc etc sounds great, promising, a breath of fresh ‘n aw that…”
You have no idea what corrupt politicians are capable of. Robin McAlpine knew and he warned us three or four months ago about them. What Robin McAlpine didn’t know back then was just how corrupt our judiciary has become. It is what is sometimes called a ‘doom-loop’. The politicians cover the backs of the lawyers and the lawyers cover the backs of the politicians. Only the public get shafted and it works nearly all the time.
Andrew Neil is seldom short of words is he, but the state of Scottish politics and Scottish law just now leaves him almost speechless.
It’s not a breath of fresh air, I can assure you, and it will strangle the life out of this country if it is not properly investigated and folk charged. Personally, I would make a start with that vainglorious old-fool James Wolffe.
I really am at a total loss to understand Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP these days regarding the upcoming election.
From day one of its inception the SNP has, until NS got her hands on its reigns, an independence party with the fight for indy at its core. This is, as many people are all too well aware, no longer the case with the SNP it appears.
For starters where is all the ground work, behind the scenes work, that WE the electorate expected the SNP to be doing in preparation for independence, after all we have all fallen for their “give us your votes and we’ll deliver you an indy referendum” line far too often in my view. This election is the last and final time they will be getting our votes based on this what appears to now be nothing more than an never ending lie that ensures the SNP retain power in Holyrood.
As for the election itself I am generally amazed at the, still, abnormally high numbers of people who do not understand the d’Hont (AMS) system of voting for Holyrood. (I’m no expert but I think even I get the basic gist of how it works.) Of course this is exactly what the likes of the BBC/ITV/STV/SKY and the MSM want though isn’t it … a completely ignorant electorate who do not understand how the voting system works and rest assured I do not believe for one minute any of them will lift a finger to explain to people how d’Hondt works here in Scotland!
Until people better understand how d’Hondt works we will always, in my view, have politicians, like NS et al, coming out with this obnoxious line about Alex Salmond or any other independence party “playing the system.”
rant over!
“I hope the Nyah Fearties crowd and political correcto’s inc. Lesley are reading this and thinking again.”
Hey, there’ll be no dissing of the Nyah Fearties on THIS website.
@Captain Yossarian
Captain Yossarian says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:47 pm
You have no idea what corrupt politicians are capable of.
Yes, I do.
Also, I described the Alba party, not corruption, as a breath of fresh air.
I wouldn’t mind the complaint from people like Sturgeon and Riddoch – but frankly we have never been a cricket nation and I’ve never been sure whether it was a matter of choice or selection from our southern neighbours.
Great piece Wings, thanks yet again. I am at a loss to understand this ‘fair play’ gumph which emerges from Sturgeon’s lips from time to time. Saying it proves her to be more of a gambler than anything I’ve ever heard from Mr Salmond. I think it will be soon be huge odds against anyone believing that NS knows anything about fair play and even now I don’t think it’s an idea she should be peddling about herself if she wants to stay there.
“There were four parties with significant support – three Unionist and the SNP.”
Looks like that could now be updated to read ‘four Unionist’.
As for all the ‘gaming the system’ stuff; that translates as ‘you’ve come up with trick to counterbalance our own tricks’. Not even worth a serious reply.
I think there will be mutch vote rigging in this election never mind the ref. I just hope the votes will be watched very carefully before during and after the vote takes place. I think I heard somewhere that its going to be a couple of days before we find out the outcome, plenty of time to reduce the Alba votes and secure devo for a number of years to come!
If unionists and SNP MSPs are averse to ‘gaming the system’, they should stop giving their leaders and others a safety net by standing ONLY in constituency seats, NOT also on the list. But they won’t.
Seems like the SNP would prefer that Alba also contested constituency seats. Would that make them more ‘legitimate’? Be careful what you wish for.
Alba positioning itself as a list-only party seeking ‘only’ to boost the pro-indy representation in Parliament is a political strategy, of course. In reality it’s clear that it’s essentially an SNP competitor taking a political choice to nominally support the SNP for now (hence having policies on other issues where they differ from the SNP). This time round. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sought to contest constituency seats in subsequent elections – and could do quite well if their list MSPs prove themselves during this parliamentary term.
But for now, supporting the SNP on the constituency vote is a pretty good strategy to demonstrate willingness to work together (and put the SNP in a position where they look the ones who aren’t prepared to strike compromises).
Elizabeth Hagan , yes your correct we are in a country with an ageing population with fewer of working age, its called the UK, however Scotland has an abundance of natural resources which if put to work for five million instead of sixty million make it a viable country.
Maybe you would like to spend a couple of minutes doing this quiz and educating yourself on an Independent Scotlands Potential.
https://www.businessforscotland.com/the-quick-quiz-on-scotlands-economy-that-shocked-independence-supporters-and-unionists-alike/
Strikes me that when someone has pursued a long-term fraudulent strategy, the knowledge that one has done wrong is submerged by the belief that it Is actually the other party’s fault for believing you in the first place.
And the belief that it is the other party’s fault can soon start to turn into a dislike and even hatred of them; first for their gullibility, and eventually for the very fact of their existence.
FOA,,,Tom Gordon.
QUOTE ME ON THIS TOM,
NICOLA STURGEON IS THR MOST EVIL WOMAN EVER TO ENTER THE POLITICAL ARENA SINCE MARGARET THATCHER.
I AM GOING TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST THIS PSYCHOPATH AND RECOMMEND THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GLASGOW SOUTHSIDE VOTE FOR SARWAR IN THEIR CONSTITUENCY VOTE,,,AND ALBA FOR THE LIST VOTE…end.
I totally agree an SNP Constituency Vote and an ALBA list vote is the best route to gaining our Supermajority,,,BUT, think of how smoother the route to Independence would be without liar Sturgeon and all those Unionist “B Listers”.
So Glasgow Southside Constituency Vote has to be Labour 1 and ALBA 2.
Labour, because they are the only credible Party to unseat the toxic Sturgeon.
We will still win our Supermajority on 6th May.
And the sheepish MSPs she leaves behind will soon fall into line behind any recommendations Salmond puts forward regarding indyRef2.
What’s not to like?
Rules? Whenever we look like winning they change the rules!
What is she so afraid of? She is the most timid, establishment compliant ‘leader’ ever. At least by the time Alex gets on a debate he will have had plenty of time to rubbish this idiocy.
This won’t be popular here but here me out. I voted brexit & i voted no. I’m not particularly what you would call a yoon, I.e I am Scottish when asked my nationality & the main reason I voted no is down to the English hating braveheart types, the majority I’ve seen are Buckfastleigh drinking, junkies who are professional multi-gen benefit claimants who contribute nothing to society. I am a nationalist, I would never advocate cruelty or outright racism to any race but, I do not want my people to become a minority, I do not want incomers mostly who hold dual nationality/passports in office, making laws or standing in our Parliament spitting WHITE!, I also will never accept that men are women whether they choose to split their tadjer or not. I also have no interest in who people have sex with, as long as it is consensual and doesn’t involve children, mentally handicapped (any age) or animals. I hate woke, I hate women who think they are being sexually assaulted on a daily basis because a man smiled at them or touched her hand whilst handing her a pen in the office!. Nobody needs to be told you are guy, why would your bedroom antics need to be told to anyone other than who you want to share them with?, please.s its barely ever a surprise or a shock when people ‘come out’ telling me that does not make me do business with you or want to employ you, it doesn’t make me feel sorry for you, it does put me off being around you, not because you’re guy but because you have either attempted to seek pity or extra equality (yes it’s even been written down, go figure) I have family members & friends who are guy, they are fantastic people, but not because they are guy & none of them ever discuss their sex lives in our company and nor do our straight friends. Sex education in schools is horrendous and horrific to most adults so hell knows how it affects young children. In my opinion this is the start to lowering the age of consent and paedophilia becoming mainstream. I would ban men in dresses being permitted into ANY school or public buildings such as libraries. There is no need for children to be taught anything other than reproductive health and consent laws along with being respectful of both sex’s. Boys shouldn’t be considered as abusers or oppressors of girls & girls should be taught to be as confident and assertive.
I realise my views will probably seem extreme to readers here, but a 6’2 hairy man in a lycra dress in a class of children SHOULD be seen by everyone as an extreme that is never acceptable. Nearly everyone in my family, work & friends are on the same page with mostly everything I’ve listed here. Not one of us can ever vote snp, not in its current state. Krankie is to us a football hooligan in a suit, every time I see her I can only ever get anImage of her in a shell suit swigging a can of super lager with an arm round her burden. So here’s my question , we can see most of you are voting snp 1 Alba 2. We can never hold our noses to vote snp, we could be persuaded to vote Alba 2 though, what would be the recommendation for us to vote?, we are only non indi voters due to the reasons listed above, I.e we are not staunch unionists we are just anti snp/woke. If we give Alba our regional votes without giving snp constituency would that help getting indi?, but more importantly (to us) would it help get rid of sturgeon & co?. We are not all in same area, we are spread across Central region up to Dundee is. Should we all vote for one party no matter the local candidate and if so which would do the most damage to sturgeon without ending up with as woke?
de brus – Alex Salmond will take the place of Patrick Harvie and the fandango will continue. The malfeasance which is present at Holyrood, St Andrews House, Victoria Quay and all up and down Scotland in civil-service offices and legal firms will not be cleaned-up by this. You don’t build anything decent on top of all of this shit. One glimmer of hope is that James Wolffe will not want to meet a resurgent Alex Salmond any time soon and so will likely retire. That’s my guess and he was a dangerous old fool anyway.
IN A NUTSHELL
It is worth considering that while Scotland were being lulled into following Nicola after the 2014 IndyRef ‘defeat’, the engine room of the English Ruling Class became fully alert to the threat of a possible Scottish Independence – and formed a plan. Their objective was to cripple Scotland’s political institutions without anyone knowing – beginning with the office of the First Minister.
First priority was to get Westminster agents on to the FM’s staff, into the civil service and into both the Crown office, and the office of the Lord Advocate.
Then to prepare, orchestrate and provide funding for the entire Scottish Media for a new long-term anti-Indy campaign.
All the while Scotland dozed, leaving Independence and everything else in Nicola’s safe hands, underpinned by a strong faith in the SNP.
An SNP spokesperson said: Nah! That’s pure fantasy. Nobody could believe that. It didnae happen. Nicola’s alright. SNP 1&2.
Peter Bell- Where I would disagree with you is the SNP not getting a majority because of Alba picking up list seats.
If the SNP don’t win the majority on the constituency seats. I doubt that they wouldn’t pick up enough list seats , just because Alba are in town. They didn’t get a majority in 2016 , because their vote is basically too good on the 1st vote to get enough list seats. Even when they don’t win all the 1st seats.
I think the SNP will need to win on the 1st vote or get within a seat. They will probably still get two list seats. Expecting people not to vote Alba on the vague idea that the SNP will get 3 or 4 list seats , when Alba could get 10-12 is not the kind of gamble worth taking.
Captain Yossarian says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:02 pm
de brus – Alex Salmond will take the place of Patrick Harvie and the fandango will continue.
Pessimistic maybe, but definitely likely …
@ Elizabeth Hagan says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:45 pm
Dear Rev, Please can you explain to me how Scotland can afford to be independent? From my reading of all the financial implications I fail to see how an aging population & fewer working age population can be burdened with the level of debt that the present Scottish Government have. I worry not for myself but for my children. I am a very proud Scottish Lass who can hold her head up high anywhere in the world but this debacle of Scottish Politics at the moment causes despair.’
Business for Scotland is listed in the middle of the first page of the WOS site, log on, have a look, they’ve produced a very good wee book of Scotlands true wealth. You can even order copies. There are also posters.
But off the top of my head – about 2 million barrels of oil per DAY out of Scotlands territorial waters and an estimated 30 years of the stuff left.
25% of renewable energy potential for all of Europe based in Scotland.
90% of all UK fresh water based in Scotland.
Daily exporters of Electricity to England – do we import it from them – no we don’t.
Self sufficient and exporting – food.
Whisky. Not even going to go there, but the yearly income generated – in one year – from Islay was £1 billion. All registered via the HQ’s in London.
Anyway when you get the facts its shocking how much they’ve bled Scotland over the years. Now they’re going to destroy us if we don’t get Indy.
Seems like the English variant of Covid is causing mayhem throughout the world.
Alex Salmond trying his best to get ALBA’s voice heard.
“The former first minister has said he will be writing to all broadcasters to ensure the party can participate in forthcoming televised election debates and other shows.
Speaking at a campaign briefing, Salmond revealed his party would be writing to the regulator Ofcom the broadcasters to ensure fairness and parity of coverage. ”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19204012.alex-salmond-write-bbc-ensure-alba-included-future-tv-debates/
Re my comment above if the regulator Ofcom are anything like the EC then ALBA will be marginalised altogether. That’s what happens when a foreign country’s captured bodies decides for us.
Elizabeth Hagan, the Scottish Government does NOT have any debt – it is not allowed to. The UK govt has debt. When Scotland becomes independent there will be negotiations about debts and assets. But it has already been agreed that the UK govt is fully responsible for all debts and guarantees them.
@Andrew 1.26pm
Perhaps this place is something of an echo chamber, but that’s no great surprise given its states purpose. It’s good that you are at least persuadable: doubtless there are many like you. They will of course all have different motivations, beliefs and particular “hot button” issues they care about more than others.
A few other posters in the last few days have posted similar “But why won’t you answer all these questions!” approaches, and I’m afraid the answer to you is the same.
Either you accept a priori that an independent Scotland is capable of making a success of independence or your don’t. If it’s the latter, there’s literally no point engaging as you’re never likely to accept the principle. If however you accept that it’s possible, but you don’t in your heart of hearts really want it, your view of any arguments advanced in favour will already be prejudiced against accepting pro independence arguments or plans.
As to some of your “matters of concern” it’s not as if these haven’t been widely discussed – even don’t you death in many cases – but it’s never going to be possible to give slam dunk answers to these issues. In the end, the best any of us can expect is to have information at our disposal to allow us to weigh up the balance of risks versus opportunities isn’t it?
Over the course of #indyref1 campaign around 20% changed their minds on the issue. Many people including me changed from supporting devo max to full indy, for many and various reasons.
Do you honestly think that Scots are less capable than other nations of adopting their own currency and having a central bank? Less capable than small relatively poor countries like the Baltic States or former Yugoslav republics? Really?
The EU membership issue has been impacted by brexit and passage of time. We will now definitely be outside and would need to reapply. However, all the indications are that the EU would welcome us back with open arms and ensure it would happen quickly if we asked. There is no queue, and it would be a unique situation just like brexit was. In the end it’s a matter for Scots to decide if they want to rejoin given the circumstances or want an EEA solution like Norway or EFTA. The sky won’t fall whatever is chosen, but you can hardly hold up British nationalism as an example of stability and economic rationality given the self harm of brexit.
There won’t be any impact on pensions, sorry…that’s just a Britnat “Project Fear” talking point to spook the horses. Pensions will still be paid.
In short, nobody sane ever asserted indy was risk free or would have no negative impacts. Similarly no unionist can demonstrate staying in the union is risk free or plain sailing. If you honestly decide post brexit UK is preferable to an independent Scotland then good luck to you, but please don’t insult our intelligence by asserting that the reason you’re not inclined to vote is that your questions aren’t being answered. Given the broken promises of the Vow and EU membership it’s simply impossible to say that the case for unionism is somehow self evident, whereas the case for indy has to proven to the “nth” degree and outcomes guaranteed!
Lost a lot of respect for Riddoch over that ‘gaming’ the election comment.
If you don’t like Alex Salmond Lesley – that’s fine – just say you don’t like Alex Salmond and you won’t vote for his party.
But making up nonsense that implies that creating a new political party and standing for election – in a democracy of all things – is somehow morally cheating, seems slightly sinister.
Friends of mine in the Greens are sharing a screenshot of a new SGP propaganda post which says:
“As most familiar with the electoral system are aware, Green presence in the next Scottish parliament can be maximised by casting your list vote on the second ballot.
Alex Salmond’s supermajority is just as achievable through a Green vote” (emphasis mine.)
So it looks like Nicla’s little pseudo-environmentalist* helpers are, true to opportunist form, now contradicting the SNP’s po-faced messaging about the dishonesty of daring to deviate from the One Kirk.
(* I stopped believing anyone in Scottish politics understood climate when we banned nuclear power, but I digress.)
@Elizabeth Hagan
https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/
answers all your questions to the last tip’n tottle.
It will change your mind. But you are a fairminded person, able to tell truth from lies, so you are in no danger.
@Elizabeth Hagan
Please can you explain how Scotland can afford NOT to be independent with a partner that under the excuse of the union is siphoning over 90% of the revenues from Scotland’s assets and sharing with Scotland less than a 10% of its own, it is using Scotland’s assets to borrow against so it can continue generating ridiculous amounts of debt a 10% of which it then expects Scotland to pay for, it is currently attempting to take over Scotland’s produce share of Scotland’s markets to cover for the enormous fall in its exports due to its own self inflicted brexit, is attacking Scotland’s brand in a desperate attempt to make this union rather than Scotland look profitable, is stripping Scotland of its working age population and denying the entry of EU citizens to replace for the population that is lost, has already stolen 6000 sq miles of Scottish territorial waters and has stolen control of Scotland’s main assets, such as the NHS, in order to sell them in toxic future trade deals that will only benefit England and it has continuously its hands on the common purse that should be shared by Scotland, Wales, NI and England?
I would be most grateful if you could explain, because quite frankly, I simply cannot see it.
de brus says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:36 pm
somerled says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:26 pm
@ de brus
So you are happy to work with corrupt politicians to get Indy?
Yep.
de brus, At least you are an honest criminal 🙂
But I hope you will end up in the pokey like Craig Murray, maybe you can share a bed with him, oops sorry meant cell 🙂
Rebuffs to gaming the system:
– If the system has been unfair for the last 20 years, why did nobody say anything?
– Since 2016 Holyrood has controlled the voting system, if its broken, they could have ‘fixed’ it any time in the last 5 years. Why didnt they?
– FPTP for Holyrood then? If its good enough for Westminster, why not Holyrood too? c90% SNP on c50% of the vote? Really?
– More canditates, parties and voting options is better for democracy.
– There are 3 main Unionist parties (Con, Lab, Lib), there are 3 main independence parties (SNP, Alba, Green). How is that gaming the system?
If anyone tries the ‘both votes SNP’ tosh, promoting the party (SNP) ahead of the cause (Indy), thereby showing indy is not their priority, here are rebuffs to that.
– Both votes SNP has given Murdo Fraser a 20 year Holyrood career.
– On latest polling, both votes SNP gets 1 List SNP, 21 tories.
– List vote is effectively for who you want in Opposition in the Scottish Parliament, Scottish nationalists or British Nationalists.
manandboy says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:05 pm
IN A NUTSHELL
It is worth considering that while Scotland were being lulled into following Nicola after the 2014 IndyRef ‘defeat’, the engine room of the English Ruling Class became fully alert to the threat of a possible Scottish Independence – and formed a plan. Their objective was to cripple Scotland’s political institutions without anyone knowing – beginning with the office of the First Minister’
Timeline… up to the start Nov 2017 procedures against Alex…
18/9/14 Indy Ref 1 Scotland votes 55% – 45% to remain part of the UK.
19th September 2014 AS announces he is stepping down and Nicola Sturgeon is his successor.
November 2014 Nicola Sturgeon made leader of SNP and FM of Scotland
Re the Rangers malicious prosecution…
Whitehouse and Clark became administrators of Rangers in February 2012, less than a year after the club was bought by Craig Whyte. The club was purchased by a consortium led by Charles Green but went bust that October.
Whitehouse was first arrested in November 2014 then again in September 2015.
2015
7th May 2015 UK GE – SNP win 56 seats and a mandate ‘to hold a second Indy Ref should Scotland be taken out of the EU against her will’
AS is re-elected to Westminster. The Yes movement is delighted at this, the wily experienced fox, in WM, free to make contacts, while the protégé at Holyrood has an experienced team to get established on the Home Front. Tactically it seemed ideal.
1st July 2015 Leslie Evans becomes Permanent Secretary Scotland, selected by and reporting directly to Nicola Sturgeon – about 10 – 15 years earlier she was involved in local Edinburgh politics and instrumental in presenting a falsely altered report that led to a community charity that trained video editing skills being deprived funds. Local SNP activists were aware/involved in complaints against her for this reason. SNP vetting does not appear to have worked with regards her being hired.
(In due course she becomes Crown Agent/MI5 – David Harvie’s line manager, and also the person responsible for the Redactions at the Scot Gov Inquiry into the Judicial Review ‘unlawful/tainted by apparent bias’ committee.)
September 2015 The Sunday Times prints a story about MP – Michelle Thompson – intimating dodgy property transactions against her – these turn out to be unfounded.
Michelle is ‘persuaded’ to resign the SNP whip. Nicola Sturgeon the Feminist FM is noticeably silent with regards any form of support for her.
December 2015 WM votes to illegally bomb Syria. 57 out of 59 Scottish MPs vote against.
————————————————————————————————————
2016
5th May 2016 – Holyrood Election
1st June 2016 Rt Hon Lord Advocate James Wolfe installed.
23rd June 2016 Brexit Referendum
17th December 2016: Herald
“NICOLA Sturgeon’s top aide became involved in a story about
MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh being chased by the taxman,
according to a leaked email.
Liz Lloyd, the Chief of Staff to the First Minister, used
her government account to email the SNP press office at
Westminster within hours of the story breaking in two
tabloid newspapers.”
IN THIS YEAR: 1st June 2016 – FIRST MINISTER NICOLA STURGEON – REINSTATES THE CROWN PROSECUTION FISCAL SERVICES HEAD – LORD ADVOCATE – TO MINISTERIAL POSITION ( removed by AS in 2007 as a conflict of interest undr EU law…). Who knew, certainly not due to public pressure.
————————————————————————————————————
2017
16th March 2017 Terrible May officially rejects NS S 30 / IR2 request. ‘Now is not the Time.’
4th May 2017 – Scottish Local Elections
8th June 2017 – Terrible May calls a GE and wins.
AS loses his seat.
NS takes IndyRef2 off the table. Now is not the time.
A marked difference in her attitude is seen.
‘Not until the Terms of Brexit are Known becomes the mantra.
13th June 2017 Not sure if this is correct date?- Ref-Scot taken down at £482,000 of £1 million target – no accounts published for same – which is a contravention of Electoral Commission rules, and extremely bad practice. Terms and conditions of the fund raiser were that it was specifically to be Ring Fenced for the next Indy Ref, and not used to fund day to day SNP party expenditure.
The Brexit deadline time line is I think November 2018 ish.
Mark MacDonald MSP in Aberdeenshire area, faces allegations Mid 2017 of sexual harassment. Full enquiry revealed he had texted a female co-worker using the word ‘dingied’ and auto correct changed it to ‘fingered’ – in his text he told her of this and made a joke that it was a good thing he’d checked before he sent it. Forced to resign Nov 2017
July 2017 (source Civil Service World) HM Revenue and Customs confirm the go ahead on a new Civil Service Hub to be built at Waverly St, Edinburgh to staff 11 Civil Servant departments – 3,000 positions. 20 year lease taken out. Artisan the contractor.
August 2017 Police Scotland drop / close the enquiry into Michelle Thompson MP (she lost her seat in the GE earlier). No charges ever brought against her. It took Police Scotland from Sept 2015 – August 2017 to establish she had not committed any crime!!!
30th August 2017 Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans meets with Civil Servant Unions to attempt to gain support against AS.
Both Pete Wishart – October 2017 and Tommy Shepherd (Tommy did this in a public talk, as far as I can tell he was the first person to run this up the flagpole, since then he has kept his head down on this subject (his background is old/new labour) start to talk about ‘not until after Brexit and the hard effects are felt, should we go for IndyRef2’.
PW is fully supported in this view by John Swinney.
October 2017 ScotGov begins review of complaints policy. Aamer Anwar makes allegations of ‘ticking time bomb’ ‘catalogue’ of sexual harassment at HR.
Complainer H makes first disclosure of her allegations of sexual assault at the hands of Alex Salmond to her boyfriend.
31st October 2017 Scot Cabinet meet to discuss Parliament announcement re new actions on sexual harassment in light of #METOO movement. John Swinney later does a speech in Parliament re same.
31 October 2017 Daily Record / David Clegg receive a tip off from Scot Gov regarding sexual offences allegedly committed by AS during his time in office. David Clegg is known associate of Liz Lloyd – close member of NS staff. David Clegg openly reports this tip off (and the date of same) in the latter part of 2018 when the Alex Salmond issue goes public following another leak.
31st October 2017, well before the “concerns” of Woman A and B in the civil case had even been communicated to anybody in Government or Woman H – Ms Anne Harvey’s private phone was inundated with text messages asking for information on Mr Salmond.
This suggests the fishing expedition had started in earnest well before Woman A and B from the original case or Woman H. Anne Harvey worked alongside Alex Salmond over many years and became a vital defence witness. She knows of and was friends with at least one of the complainers.
NOVEMBER 2017
Around this time (possibly a month or 2 earlier) Angus Robertson drafts and introduces new NEC procedures within the structure of SNP which effectively remove democratic choices about policy and candidate selection away from the members and concentrates it within the SNP HQ.
Multiple candidates from GRA supporters installed into places on NEC.
Rumours abound that AS has the backing to take over the Scotsman newspaper.
There are also rumours he is not happy at lack of Indy progress being made by NS and is intending to return to front line politics.
The witch hunt against Mark McDonald – forced to resign – now appears unwise, as it has opened up an MSP vacancy in Aberdeenshire…
Staff become instrumental in receiving and dealing with historic complaints of sexual harassment between staff and former First Minister Alex Salmond.
Woman H complains to SNP staffer McCann who famously states ‘we’ll sit on this in case we ever have to deploy it’.
Alex procedure commences …
Thank you Morag I really like your articles.
(And unfortunately in the process it acquired a toxic hubris that seems to equate its monopoly of support for independence with a licence to force through a raft of wildly unpopular policies that nobody, not even the party’s own members, ever voted for.)
I’m wondering what motivates the SNP to force through these wildly unpopular policies?
Is it madness or badness?
“Elizabeth Hagan, the Scottish Government does NOT have any debt – it is not allowed to”.
Scottish Futures Trust is debt.
Even if Nicola did want another referendum she would be wise not to pursue one anytime soon because she would lose it, with the Scottish economy in ribbons, with many of her new spending commitments such as the 4% pay rise for nurses based off of the temporary emergency COVID money. The current Tory government can be accused of many things but it certainly can’t be accused of austerity not with the way they are spending money.
You could see the way that the independence referendum was like an albatross around her neck during the debate. she would have preferred to talk about anything else because she had no good explanation for pursuing one while the nation is being trashed but she couldn’t just come out and say that the referendum bill was none action meant to placate her increasingly frustrated base.
Seems to me that the people who are gaming the system are the current MSP’s – FM included who are standing for a Constituency seat and a List seat at the same election.
John Swinney, Keith Brown, Nicola Sturgeon and others.
Please explain why this is not ‘gaming the system’ and ‘cheating’?
I would love one of our journalists to ask Nicola that at her next interview
In most peoples’ eyes that means you are giving yourself two chances at being elected – just in case the first vote doesn’t work???
Aye, by standing as a candidate on both ballots you are ‘cheating’, you are ‘gaming the system’, you are denying another person the opportunity to represent Scotland.
Are you so feart that you are not going to hold your seat? then maybe that’s because you realise people are fed up with your ineffectiveness and maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give someone else a chance.
In (soviet) Scotland system games you.
The article doesn’t note the real thing blocking the SNP from a majority: no-hoper Green constituency candidates.
They’re running 11 candidates this election, and none of them will win the seat. What they WILL do is suck votes away from the SNP, and that will probably allow the Tories to retain 3 constituencies: Edinburgh Central, Galloway, and Ettrick.
The Northern Isles and Rennie’s seat will probably stay Lib Dem. Thanks to the Greens, the SNP can only realistically win 67 constituencies.
Even the English don’t believe in the union anymore lol
Small steps. It’s only the kids for now, but
Headteacher removes Union flag after hundreds of pupils protest
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/headteacher-agrees-remove-union-flag-102113963.html
Well I suppose since Richard Lochhead isn’t even on the SNPs Highland List then he cant be accused of gaming the system. He is the exception I think unless somebody says otherwise.
The Wokists are very definitely gaming the System and the first to bleat about others gaming it. The Wokists have that in common with the Tories. Funny that!!!!
Rules of the game as seen from the home counties.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2021/how-to-scotch-independence/
The trouble with playing by such rules is that they are specifically designed to scotch.
And the SNP is playing by them.
Slow learners in Bute House.
Hah. I sent this to Stu as a note for an article I thought he could write. Him being the wordsmith and all. Lazy bugger…
Peter A. Bell: if she puts it off again, with the advent of the Alba Party, specifically brought into being to ensure she doesn’t, she will be pulled down within a short time of the election. If that happens, the country will seek sides and the independence goal or total subjugation will be the only games in town, then. That might mean that Westminster will send in the troops. If she is as intransigent (I’m assuming she is not stupid) as she has been for the past seven years, she will go down in history as the Chamberlain of Scotland: ineffectual and, ultimately, totally out-of-step with reality and history. Maybe, like Chamberlain, she will be credited with giving us breathing space to prepare for what is to come. Time will tell. Alternatively, it will all fizzle out and Scotland will be absorbed finally into a Greater England, as its northernmost region, on a par with Yorkshire – the aim of Nationalist England for nigh on a thousand years. The Scots, unlike their Irish cousins, rarely fight till their backs are to the wall, then they come out all guns blazing and do not back down even when the ammunition is spent. I’m not trying to sell the mythical idea of the plucky, heroic Scot, just the reality of our national psyche. Many Unionists believe we are no different from the English, the Welsh or the Irish, but they will discover that we are when the chips are down.
To be fair he has re-written it a bit. I don’t think I was quite so hard on the Greens in my version.
Well put.
Politics /is/ a game. It’s just played for the very highest stakes.
Incidentally, May’s ‘Politics is not a game’ was possibly the most un-English thing ever said by an English person. What happened to ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’? Not to mention treating serious things lightly and taking trivial things seriously?
Very disappointing to see Sturgeon echoing this. Almost as distasteful as Alistair Darling obliquely referencing Cromwell in the first Darling-Salmond indyref debate.
Scot Finlayson says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:08 pm
Quote:-
Seems like the English variant of Covid is causing mayhem throughout ”
You do realise that it is named fromis where was first identified from don’t you??
The new VUI-202012/01 variant has been identified in several countries including Australia, France, Denmark, Italy, Iceland and the Netherlands.
Guess how it got there (in the middle of lockdown)..via the beaches of Kent and Suffolk….( those are counties in England in case you are ignorant)
Anyone have a link for the Alba press conference?
Just in, trying to catch up…apologies if it’s already been posted above.
😉
Only if we follow the narrative set by Westminster and the British Nationalist media @Peter A Bell says at 1:23 pm
Long past time to call out their shite but regardless of the fact the SNP will most certainly become Scotlands Party of Government again its current leader follows dutifully whether it be S30 being the ‘legal gold standard’ for an Indy Ref of Alba ‘gaming the system’
This will almost certainly be the last big win for the SNP.
Over the next couple of years their vote share will be eaten away by Alba unless they abandon unpopular and unmandated policy or the Party is liquidated by its creditors.
I think NSs real worry is the haemorrhaging of SNP member’s and their cash to Alba.
The overpaid Party machine which used to rely on volunteers is now stuffed full of her woke allies on exorbitant salaries – where will the money come from and how long before the banks call in their credit lines?
@ Elizabeth Hagan
I have never understood how any Scot can call themselves proud while we remain on our knees cowed by an overbearing neighbour
Morag says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:51 pm
Hah. I sent this to Stu as a note for an article I thought he could write. Him being the wordsmith and all. Lazy bugger…
So sorry. I gave lazeeboy the credit – thanks for the article. Like you, I don’t understand any complaints about Scottish people voting to get what they want
Morag says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:51 pm
Hah. I sent this to Stu as a note for an article I thought he could write. Him being the wordsmith and all. Lazy bugger…
Reply
He probably recognised the work of a fellow wordsmith and though he could hand over to you while he went out on ‘Bear Patrol’.
Demand a share of his sweeties!
Sturgeon is running scared. She’s knows how incompetent the SNP have been and are about to be pushed in to action by a strong Opposition.
Clavie Cheil says:
1 April, 2021 at 2:45 pm
Well I suppose since Richard Lochhead isn’t even on the SNPs Highland List then he cant be accused of gaming the system. He is the exception I think unless somebody says otherwise.
I feel sorry for Richard, he must be keeping his head down in the Nu-SNP. Won’t be long before someone remembers he’s a heterosexual white man.
Guy’s basically the Scottish Jim Hacker. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world, really.
The dimmest and the dumbest of supporters in the Nicola fan club are avoiding the fact that Alex has just prevented a whole lot of voters abandoning the SNP and not supporting them with their constituency vote , time and again Alex has made it clear vote for the SNP.
The SNP mantra of SNP 1-2 will mean just as before any regional vote for the SNP will be deemed totally meaningless because if as is expected the constituency goes to the SNP therefore every regional vote will be reduced and divided by a factor of 10 , therefore a vote for ALBA in no way threatens the SNP vote it’s not really that difficult .unless you a dislike or Alex Salmond .
I can’t see why ALBA is attracting so much venom from SNP supporters and especially from Princess Nicola who is openly pursuing ALBA with the same vigor that the Unionists are attacking it gaming the system , cheating Christ I don’t believe she’s doing this , Unionists have been Tactically voting for years but when ALBA joins in its Cheating ? , and that’s from our own side,
Independence and the pursuit of it is not in the soul ownership of the SNP that they accepted the plaudits for the AUOB marches and princess Nicola was conspicuously missing she attended gay pride without any encouragement why hasn’t she attended one independence march not one
I know we’re being advised to vote SNP1 Alba2 but for those of us who would really rather not vote SNP at all, would it not be just as useful to vote for an independent on the constituency who also backs independence?
I ask this because with each day it becomes more difficult for me to contemplate voting for any of these charlatans in the SNP.
Anyone concerned about the viability of Scotland as an independent country after independence might like to read these two articles. The first is from the National and the second is the article written by Geoffrey Chapman on the London School of Economics (LSE) British Politics and Policy blog.
//www.thenational.scot/news/19204502.scotlands-economy-can-thrive-independence-downing-street-adviser-admits/
//blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scottish-independence-cost/
There will be people today who are not aware of things argued out in the lead up to the 2014 Referendum.
1. Scotland will not / does not have any ‘UK debt to worry about.
Posted link yesterday on the last thread.
————————————————————–
I see state pensions have been mentioned today:
2. Scottish independence:
Pensions ‘secure’ post-Yes, says UK minister
https://archive.is/n0Gum
Meanwhile “I promise you 9 ships in Scottish yards if you vote no”… Ian Davidson (EX MP) Glasgow & Chair of Westminster Scottish affairs committee was told the above in early 2014.
Archie McPherson (football pundit) was telling folk for Labour round the doors they would lose their pension right up to the vote. 🙁
https://tinyurl.com/cuz5jyw
“Lazy bugger…”
🙂
Very cute photo!
@Helen Yates
To put it mildly. No. That would not be wise at all.
If the SNP doesn’t take the constituency seat, it increases their chances of grabbing a list seat, and decreases the chances of ALBA getting one.
GlenIslay says:
1 April, 2021 at 3:31 pm
@Helen Yates
To put it mildly. No. That would not be wise at all.
If the SNP doesn’t take the constituency seat, it increases their chances of grabbing a list seat, and decreases the chances of ALBA getting one.
——————————————————————————————————————-
It also increases the chances of a Wokist candidate winning on the List.
Sturgeon plays every trick in the book but says that Salmond is gaming the system.
What irony.
All she is doing is drawing attention to herself.
Her nose is getting longer by the minute.
@Glenislay, Clavie Cheil et al
I see the logic of your point, but I’m afraid I just can’t bring myself to vote for Robertson in Edinburgh Central. I’d sooner see him lose even if it meant a yoon getting in, or helping Graham Campbell get in on the list. The latter would soon show his quality in Holyrood and serve as a useful corrective for those tempted to vote SNP in future.
I’d happily sacrifice a few seats to “surgical strikes” against the likes of Robertson and Sturgeon.
If Sturgeon and Salmond had the interests of Scotland to heart they would stop this petty feud and join forces. We know what Sturgeon is like but I suspect Salmond is mainly out for revenge. It may not serve Scotland well.
I wonder how the media will try to justify leaving Alex Salmond out of the live debates.
Just remember they included UKIP in these debates in 2016…
Helen Yates
Why not look up the statistics on your MSP.
If they already have a massive majority you might feel your vote won’t be missed, however if it’s a skin of the teeth job missed votes will be pertinent.
All down to your own concience. It’s fine to feel guided but you shouldn’t feel ‘compelled’.
pixal says:
Alba splitting the indy vote when the actual example of splitting the indy vote was when Alison Johnstone of the greens stood in the constituency election and won 4600 vote. Ruth Davidson beat the snp candidate by 400 votes.
Reply
Do you reckon most of these 4,600 votes came from students.
There were a lot of students in Central Edinburgh in 2016
not so many now due to Covid.
@ Helen Yates says:
1 April, 2021 at 3:23 pm
I know we’re being advised to vote SNP1 Alba2 but for those of us who would really rather not vote SNP at all, would it not be just as useful to vote for an independent on the constituency who also backs independence?
I ask this because with each day it becomes more difficult for me to contemplate voting for any of these charlatans in the SNP.’
Helen – you make a very good point. I’ve taken a different route than you, but had come to the point that I could not vote for John Swinney because of his behaviour.
It is Alex and his policy of SNP 1 Alba 2 that has persuaded me to ‘hold my nose’ – for the last time. Not doing it again, ‘specially not’ for Pete Wishart.
After the hellish way they’ve behaved towards Alex, if he can do it, and work with them, so can I.
My line in the sand is, I will campaign for the good guys and gals on the SNP Constituency. Swinney, Nicla, Robertson – can sink or swim.
Others are better at explaining the DeHont system than me why SNP1 Alba 2 is important to work.
Max the Yes.
Andy Ellis says:
1 April, 2021 at 3:40 pm
@Glenislay, Clavie Cheil et al
I see the logic of your point, but I’m afraid I just can’t bring myself to vote for Robertson in Edinburgh Central
Reply
What about Bonnie Prince Bob?
Leaflet in from the Green party remined me to put a recycling bin at the front door for the election leaflets. More cycle routes, ecotourism and slow tourism (I had to look that one up). Bollox.
@ Wee Willie
So let me get this right if someone falsely accused you of crimes you didn’t commit, trashed your reputation and tried to have you slung in jail for possibly the rest of your life for their own selfish reasons, you would be happy to forgive and join forces all for the greater good right ?
If NS says you are gaming the system surely she is too by depending on the Greens for majority for budget etc and remember also there are 3 unionist parties on the list.
Fish Wullie
Sometimes it’s the statesmenlike thing to do to put your country first.
Wee Willie @3.41pm.
Willie.
Its not a feud, that’s what the BritNat media like to call it, just like the misnomer they use when describing the war on Syria they call it civil war.
No Sturgeon and her vile clique tried to send Alex Salmond to prison for a very long time, yet Salmond has acted in a very statesman like fashion after the event but Sturgeon is still using derogatory language about Alex Salmond.
@Ruby 3.51pm
Yup, I definitely plan to vote BPB. My ideal result would be for BPB to deprive Robertson of just enough votes for him to lose the seat. 🙂
So Salmond is the new Farage. This is how it’s being spun.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/scotland/2021/04/war-woke-meaning-alba-party
Since I joined Alba Party this will be the last time I put a peg over my nose and vote for the SNP in any Constituency vote. I have no desire to increase Emma Roddicks chances of getting elected.
For me it is a simple equation. The More SNP constituency wins equals more Alba wins on the Lists. Less SNP constituency wins equal more Yoon and Wokist wins on the Lists. The Former I can live with just but the Latter not at all.
Onlooker says:
1 April, 2021 at 4:06 pm
So Salmond is the new Farage. This is how it’s being spun.
Same dirty tricks they pulled on Farage, too. Expect ALBA to be accused of taking “Russian dark money”, or some such bollocks.
“so for as long as the constitution is the defining facet of Scottish politics – something which is now basically a permanent feature and will remain so until either independence happens or support for it collapses like it did in Quebec”
Lets remember that peoples in self-determination conflict are nearly always linguistically divided. In Quebec it was Anglophone vs Francophone. The greater the Anglophone population, the less chance of Quebec independence. The Canadian government favoured immigration of Anglophones into Quebec, to help stop the vote for cessession; the Parti Quebecois sought the opposite.
Scotland seems little different, with historic census data indicating Scots (speakers) being incentivised to leave Scotland and Anglophones incentivised to settle in Scotland, especially those working in the professions with the offer of better jobs.
There is also a linkage here as to why us Scots are never taught oor ain Scots language in our schools by what is still a British state controlled education system that prioritises English language. The teaching of only English is intended to assimilate the indigenous population, and to be Anglophone, given that language and culture forms the basis of (national) identity.
The enduring nature of Scottish culture and language, despite subject to cultural and linguistic imperialism/oppression, has been difficult to break down completely; this reflects the inherent strength of our (Scottish) national consciousness, the latter an essential feature of any peoples’ desire for nationhood and independence.
Which helps explain, as would be expected, that the majority of those in favour of Scottish independence are Scots speakers holding to a Scottish identity, whilst many voters opposed to independence are Anglophones holding to a British identity.
In other words, a key determinant of Scottish independence is the language and cultural divide, which gives us our identity and our national consciousness.
Scots favouring independence need to be aware of significant ongoing population change in Scotland, and the language spoken. In this regard it is noticeable that Scotland’s census has been delayed.
Elizabeth Hagan says:
1 April, 2021 at 1:45 pm
Dear Rev, Please can you explain to me how Scotland can afford to be independent? From my reading of all the financial implications I fail to see how an aging population & fewer working age population can be burdened with the level of debt that the present Scottish Government have. I worry not for myself but for my children. I am a very proud Scottish Lass who can hold her head up high anywhere in the world but this debacle of Scottish Politics at the moment causes despair.
Don’t despair Elizabeth. That’s the object of the exercise when distorting the truth about Scotland’s economy. They want us fretting about Independence and worrying it will be a catastrophe so we avoid voting for it. But I recall from the 2014 YES campaign a very enlightening account of Scotland’s wealth written by John Jappy, who reported to Chancellor of the Exchequer and thought it was shameful how the truth about Scotland was being distorted. It was even posted on Wings back in 2013.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/author/john-jappy/
Some of it is deeply depressing about Scotland’s oil wealth being squandered, but what’s less well known is that Scotland was a healthy economy producing a reliable and stable surplus long before the discovery of North Sea Oil.
Folks have also referred you to Rev Stu’s Wee Blue Book, and that’s a good read too.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/
That Scotland’s trajectory is now looking bleak, and looking to become bleaker thanks to England’s Brexit being forced onto Scotland, then the answer must surely be less of this Union, an end to chronic underinvestment, and the cynical stewardship from Westminster, and more Independence steering our own Nation’s affairs and doing what is best for Scotland, without the compromises demanded from us by incompetent London rule.
Just look at the ferry routes linking the UK with Europe, and you see a graphic illustration of how much the UK Government is stifling Scotland, and compelling Scotland to trade through the UK so the UK Government can fiddle the books and obscure from scrutiny the incessant plundering of Scotland’s wealth and resources.
How can we afford to be Independent? Wrong question. How long can we afford not to be Independent?
Wee Willie says:
1 April, 2021 at 4:01 pm
Fish Wullie
Sometimes it’s the statesmenlike thing to do to put your country first.
—————————————————————-
I would say it’s always statesmanlike to put your country first which is what Alex is doing by advocating SNP 1 and not publicly saying a bad word about Nicola.
How statesman/woman like do you think it is to conspire to have your political rivals imprisoned on false charges ?
The Alba press conference about press coverage, television debates etc –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM4FZ0qjq-s
Fishy Wullie, to be fair the olive branch has been ALBA’s and Alex Salmond has persisted in advocating SNP constituency vote ALBA regional vote.
All he then gets is a whole lot of the feeble minded saying he is gaming the system and those who should , indeed DO know , better grasping that stick and hitting him with it.
The other stick being ‘ apologise for being found innocent of sexual harassment’.
I am truly sick and tired of hearing every Tom , Dick and Harriet bleating and blurting and ignoring the court findings.
It should really disturb all red blooded ,or even peelywally blooded , men – to be accused and know that no matter what happens in the courtroom you will be found guilty by the media , followed by the public they string along by giving half the story. And worse to come if there is no jury.
Nicola Sturgeon on BBC I am not running a split party.
She rejected Alex Salmond’s idea of creating a “super majority” by encouraging voters to back his newly-formed Alba Party on the regional list.
She is not running a split party? I think she is.
Rejects the idea of a super majority. Why exactly I would like an explanation of that one.
Right all you Tory voting people out there, we know you’ll give your constituency vote to the Tory party in Scotland on May 6th and that’s fair enough, but why not give your List vote to ALBA, never I hear you say, because you don’t want to leave the union.
But give me a moment of your time, because I’m sure you’ll all have wives or mothers or sister or even daughters you love and want to see protected via their rights now and in the future, so if you give your vote to the ALBA party, you will deprive the Greens of List seats, the Greens are the SNP enablers when it comes to pushing through very unpopular gender related policies, you know the ones I mean, the HCB the GRA and Self-Id.
The ALBA party wants to protect women’s rights that’s why women are flocking to it in there droves, if the Greens are decimated come the 6th of May and replaced by the ALBA party they’ll not back anymore of those women’s rights eroding policies, and even Tory voters in Scotland and Labour and Lib/Dems for that matter know that the SNP will eventually do deals with the ALBA party and those MSP’s also have female family members that will need their rights protected, so it makes some sense to give your list votes to the ALBA party. if you love the female members of your family give the ALBA party your List vote and stop the erosion of their rights.
I donated to Alba when it first started but I’m reading today about it’s exclusion from TV debates and Alex Salmond is threatening legal action to over turn this exclusion.
Given that the guy’s up to his eyeballs in legal fees already and Alba is essentially a start up, where is the money coming from to pay these legal fees?
He’s getting involved in so much litigation these days, he’d be as well moving the Alba HQ to the Law Society Of Scotland offices.
Princess Nicola told the BBC her party is not divided , aye ok dear.
This just shows you how out of touch she really is ,
Alex has probably just saved her Arse from what could have been a rather embarrassing loss of SNP votes
But she just can’t help herself she goes for the jugular and is more concerned with a minuscule percentage of quite hysterical fruit loops that wouldn’t recognise Independence if if dropped on their heads ,
she has to make a personal plea don’t leave us don’t go while totally avoiding the concerns of a lot of Women voters the number Totally dwarfs the fruit loops by probably 20/1 very strange priorities Princess Nicola.
This attraction to some of vocal minority groups and elements in our society while ignoring the majority of normal people in Scotland hasn’t went unnoticed and it Questions Why what’s the attraction is it her personal preference ? the strange setup in her marriage that is like two individuals living under the same roof but living totally different lives doesn’t strike me as normal
I’ve noticed Sturgeon has changed her tactics from telling people to vote for the SNP 1&2 for a majority to hold a referendum to now a Yes majority is a mandate for indyref2, the Alba party has her and the SNP worried.
Sturgeon cannae handle it, can she? From reading about her for the last year and a bit on this site, this response doesn’t really surprise me but surely you’d at least try and restrain yourself. She’s spent a week spewing invective at Salmond when if she’d had any sense she’d just have ignored it. Then having the stupidity to say on the radio this morning that transphobia is a major problem in Scotland, as though the feelings of weird wee men is what keeps normal people up fretting at night.
She’s decided- of course she had- to run a “re-elect the Covid Goddess” campaign, but people are sick of it- and of her.
This is the first time she’s faced much real criticism and it’s showing.
Scotland’s answer to Hillary Clinton…
New Opinium Survey:
Just completed it a few minutes ago so results very soon.
A few questions on Scottish previous elections and how will you vote in May.
Constituency and list vote preferences including ALBA.
The lots of ‘Big Labour’ and ‘Big Conservative’ darn Sarf stuff plus what do you think of Boris, Sturgeon and Salmond.
And I see Salmond is getting compared to Farage. Now, I don’t like Farage one but, but haven’t all the sneering fools noticed that Farage beat them then beat them again?
Actually Sturgeon is more like Farage than Salmond, for she is discriminating against women’s rights via her very unpopular gender policies backed by the Greens.
Lets remove the Greens from Holyrood come the 6th of May, and cut off Sturgeon’s enabler, and unpopular policy backer Patrick Harvey.
100%Yes @ 4.22pm
‘I’ve noticed Sturgeon has changed her tactics from telling people to vote for the SNP 1&2 for a majority to hold a referendum to now a Yes majority is a mandate for indyref2, the Alba party has her and the SNP worried.’
– Now the Herald are reporting she won’t work with Salmond if he is elected.
Slightly obvious election policy from Sturgeon, make vague promises to everyone, keep voters slightly unsure and then deliver nothing. Expect a lot more of this.
A Person – Now, I don’t like Farage one but, but haven’t all the sneering fools noticed that Farage beat them then beat them again?
They really haven’t. He triggers their sneer reflex like painfully unfunny right-on BBC radio comedians who think shouting “DAILY MAIL!” is a punchline. Too busy virtue signalling to learn anything.
Farage is a political outsider who somehow wangled the biggest political upset in modern UK history through cunningly gaming the system by, eh, saying what he believed in and… asking people to vote for it.
Now it’s Alex’s turn.
Btw, vaguely related – the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect also works in Scotland. We accept the MSM is lying to us about Scottish independence, but somehow assume they’re not lying to us about everything else.
Robert Graham @ 4.19.
Aye Nicola says the SNP isnt divided coz all the pro-indy, pro-equality for all types have left the SNP & joined Alba. The SNP is now fully united as Swally Nicolas’s Pish!!!
News report May 8th 2026
Nicola Sturgeon now rivals Jim Murphy as the worst Scottish politician ever after the once dominant SNP were completely wiped out at yesterdays Scottish parliamentary elections. Sturgeon will now be questioned by police after the evidence of her part in fabricating evidence in the attempted stitch up of her one time mentor, new Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, was given to police. Meanwhile, Salmond who led a party for the second time to a majority in the Scottish parliament will, as per his parties manifesto, immediately begin negotiations with Westminster after withdrawing from the Treaty of Union.
We can but dream.
Republicofscotland @4.18
I am actively considering giving my list vote to Alba. My problem is this; my hope is to get rid of Swinney but Mr. Salmond is in effect encouraging people to vote for the likes of Swinney. Though I do not believe any of the claptrap about gaming the system/cheating (AS isn’t, he’s being pragmatic and rather clever) I am not sure I can bring myself to lend my vote though your points about women are 100% valid. I am mortally opposed to the cry of SNP 1 from Alba as I also don’t want to lend any part of my list vote to Ms. Sturgeon and her collection of misfits which I could in effect be doing by giving Alba my vote.
Do you see my dilemma?
Sorry that was very rambly!
Mist – Maybe Murrell has given Alex a few tips on legal expenses. I think the Murrells have more Interdicts and Injunctions than any other couple in Scotland.
-Red-
Exactly, prick though Farage is he accomplished his goals, when push comes to shove NS and her allies would rather be the darling of such talk shows than the forgers of an independent country.
-Frazerio-
Not outwith the realms of possibility in my view, imagine in 2011 if you’d told someone that the Tories represented Middlesbrough and Bolsover and Labour represented Canterbury.
Bartleby64 @4.57pm.
If you can’t bring yourself to vote for the SNP/Swinney, then that’s fair enough, I completely understand why you’ve come to that decision.
However I am pleased that you are considering giving your List vote to the ALBA party, removing the Greens from List seats, removes Sturgeon’s and ultimately Swinney’s enablers, so you can affect Swinney’s less than truthful behaviour by helping to remove some of the the Greens, who backed Swinney in the recent VONC.
This is for the attention of those who post on the Village people’s website that is masquerading as WGD but it’s really the demented the stupid and gullible website,
Everyone knows you read the posts on here it’s a pity you people don’t have the brains to understand them ,
The latest piece of rank stupidity has Stuart Campbell advocating voting labour , 1 solitary contributor is advocating vote Labour in Sturgeons constituency that’s 1 one not Stewart Campbell or others it’s just one , is that clear or do you want it in Braille or some other medium .
So cut the shite by saying that this site is promoting vote labour I know it’s a lie it’s too bad you can’t tell the difference maybe you’re support for Princess Nicola has influenced what brain you have ,
This unhealthy fascination with ALBA on the Village people’s website is strange ALBA are saving Princess Nicola from a embarrassing reduction of former members votes on the Constituency ballot yet the venom expressed is quite baffling ALBA are supporting the SNP have you people not noticed ? Alex Salmond has said Time and again vote SNP what’s the fkn problem ? .
As Meg Merrilees says at 2.32pm when talking about GAMING THE SYSTEM why do the intrepid investigative reporters such as TOM GORDON not point out to voters that lots of MSP’S are gaming the system when they are positioning themselves on the constituency voting form and on the regional voting form
This action is totally disingenuous and outrageous ,if voters cannot support you as an individual candidate to represent them then you and your party have NO RIGHT to nullify that vote by immediately inserting yourselves on the regional vote for the party vote
So Mr Gordon we know you and other supposed journalists read this blog avidly to FISH for stories rather than do proper investigative journalism so here is an opportunity to EXPOSE the rank HYPOCRISY of certain politicians by claims of GAMING THE SYSTEM when most of them do it
Will Alba be publishing its planned legislative programme?
If it has elected members, it could introduce a Bill to Repeal the Treaty of Union with England.
The Labour Party lost its heartland in Scotland and its rapidly losing it in England. The Tories are pivoting resources and development to the Red Wall areas. London is a lost cause,but the shires and south East will remain loyal. Johnson is presiding over a revolution in English politics. The SNP have not delivered and have been just as much a failure as their Labour predecessors. The SNP needs to be mindful of all of this. They have let the Scottish people down big time,and not just over the independence issue. Child poverty,drug addiction,unemployment and a failing education system may well be much more important to the mass of ordinary people than independece. They want politicians who deliver.
John McNab @1.58
Re: P.S. Being as you ask nicely – O.K. Time to move on to more important issues.
This is a one-off election.
If Alba get enough seats to frighten SNP, then Krankie and Murrell are toast. If they refuse to go, then rank and file members will leave en-masse & join Alba. If enough SNP wake up and smell the coffee and convert, Alba might double their seats but that will take time so I envisage a hibernating parliament, with some terrible legislation passed before Krankie is bounced.
Independence cannot be won (siezed) until 2/3 of the people want it. Therefore you need centre and some right-leaning people to vote for it. A second left-leaning party will not be decisive, so the best that can be hoped for is AS removes NS, and cleans up the SNP -or sinks it.
So for me, tactically voting in every seat is the way this should happen. If it’s a good SNP candidate, keep them as MSP. If it’s a bad one, get them out. This is about the heart and soul of SNP.
– Westminster is irrelevant in this, the people always have the power.
“Hey, there’ll be no dissing of the Nyah Fearties on THIS website.”
Ah, I was thinking more of the urban myth(?) surrounding their name and its origins – the rallying warcry aimed at the weans that would run away when confronted to fight.. I remember their transit van with the name emblazened on the side, sometimes seen around the streets of Killie.
I like to keep my friends at Butterstone School informed of my progress. Their school was ‘safe’ but was called ‘unsafe’ and closed-down. My school is ‘unsafe’ but was called ‘safe’ and kept open. I’m Captain Yossarian and even I cannot understand that logic.
My school has now been checked by a team of award winning engineers and we are just waiting on the results back; in fact, they may already be back. This time, we don’t have the identities of any alphabet women to protect and so I am not expecting any redactions. It’s easy, it’s called a ‘design check’ and it is done in a day. I’ve been waiting on this for almost 7-years now and that’s a measure of just how malfeasant Holyrood and our legal profession have become.
An interesting subject which has been raised earlier today is: ‘how do we treat whistle-blowers in Scotland?’ In the rest of the UK, they are protected. In Scotland, we take £30-40k in legal fees off them and then hang them from a tree.
But what if the whistle-blower is right (and they usually are right?) Do we, in Scotland, not risk making a right arse of ourselves?
Anyway, don’t worry about that just now, the excellent MSP for Dumbarton continues to chisel away at this and it should be solved tomorrow. That will be almost 7-years. Every top-tier country in the world would have solved a case like this in a fortnight and so the malfeasance of Holyrood and their lawyers is really never-ending. It is boundless. The waste of money and needless risk to safety should of course ensure of course that a few folk are brought before the Courts, but I don’t think anyone expects that to happen. Nowadays, that type of punishment is reserved for internet bloggers.
I notice that John Swinney was out campaigning in the sun in Balgeddie today. He’s not bothering his shirt about this, is he.
Sturgeon’s attitude towards the independence movement, STINKS.
It’s imperative that the independence movement rises above such malicious attacks by bad Actors.
Engender:
https://tinyurl.com/36jbzfdc
The First Minister was speaking ahead of hustings event hosted by Engender, Scotland’s feminist policy and advocacy organisation – and has pledged to put women front and centre of the country’s strategy to recover from the coronavirus crisis.
https://archive.is/YSOII
Nicola Sturgeon: Women’s health plan to feature in NHS recovery strategy
Wee Willie says:
1 April, 2021 at 3:41 pm
If Sturgeon and Salmond had the interests of Scotland to heart they would stop this petty feud and join forces. We know what Sturgeon is like but I suspect Salmond is mainly out for revenge. It may not serve Scotland well.
If Mr Salmond was out for revenge there are many easier, more straightforward, cheaper, less-stressful, more certain ways to achieve it. AND I don’t think that he’s dumb enough not to realise that.
Mr Salmond wants independence and that will serve Nicola Sturgeon up as very cold meat on a very cold platter as food for thought after it has been achieved.
Ruby says:
1 April, 2021 at 5:44 pm
Engender:
https://tinyurl.com/36jbzfdc
The First Minister was speaking ahead of hustings event hosted by Engender, Scotland’s feminist policy and advocacy organisation – and has pledged to put women front and centre of the country’s strategy to recover from the coronavirus crisis
That’s nice of her, but who are Engender?
Engender receives funding from various organisations, with the Scottish Government Equality Fund as our main grant funder.
So it’s an organisation paid by the Scottish Government to lobby the Scottish Government. Cosy!
This kind of official astroturfing has been going on for so long now it’s no longer even shocking. But it should be. We’re literally paying hordes of useless people to act as real life sock puppets so the Government can do whatever it was going to do anyway, but pretend “civic society” demanded it.
I demand 50% female representation on the Golgafrincham B Ark.
“Gaming the system” is getting people to vote for you on an independence ticket and then, once safely elected, using your majority to pursue your own personal political agenda.
Then, before you know it, freedom of speech is cancelled if you so much as dare to ask any awkward questions about what’s been done in your name.
Patience has run out with NS, The reason Salmond is back on the scene. He can’t stand back and watch all his effort and achievement gone to waste.
Patience has run out with NS, The reason Salmond is back on the scene. He can’t stand back any longer and watch all his effort and achievement gone to waste.
Wits up wae Sturgeon. Snp is not a divided party. She’s having a laugh. It can’t be divided if it’s ran with a iron fist..She’s disillusioned. Also why would she even say that Alex is trying to get independence by the back door. Surely that’s the goal..apparently not by Sturgeon. She makes me sick. Mr Sturgeon has been very quiet though
What will Nicola Sturgeon’s Women’s health plan include?
Lots of prescriptions for HRT & boob jobs?
Penile inversion vaginoplasty?
Captain.
Just calling her Jackie Baillie would save you a lot of time.
Big Jock – aye, but do they have more injunctions and legal cases than Harry and Meghan? Who cares!
Survation poll out-not good.
ALBA only 3% on the list.
Maybe small sample size?
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1377673249304276993
@mountain shadow
Geez…give them a chance! There’s stiff in my fridge older than Alba. Still a few weeks til the election. Game on!
I find it very odd that people should vote for the SNP.
We know it has been corrupted and if they get back in power they’ll continue on the path of destroying the culture and legal foundations of Scotland.
It is not only misogynistic but is also misandrist especially anti whiteman, and that will get worse if they get in.
Voting for a corrupt party leads to more corruption, not less.
Recent examples would be ZANU in Zimbabwe, yes they became independent but ZAPU was murdered and they formed a police state, anyone think Nicola will not cling to power by any means.
Voting for the SNP is an endorsement of corruption and evil laws, feel free to do so I cannot.
“I know we’re being advised to vote SNP1 Alba2 but for those of us who would really rather not vote SNP at all, would it not be just as useful to vote for an independent on the constituency who also backs independence?”
I was in the exact same boat a week ago and totally determined to deny the SNP my votes, even to the point of being prepared to spoil my ballot if not alternative pro indy candidate was available.
I still sustain today that the SNP do not deserve the yes votes for what they have done against females’ rights, how they have undermined our democratic mandates and how they have delayed independence. In fact, nothing would make me smile more than seeing Sturgeon, Robertson, Swinney, Sommerville and Yousaf losing their seats in May.
However my aversion to vote SNP in the constituency changed dramatically when Mr Salmond launched ALBA and he asked for the constituency vote to be given to the SNP. To start with I was a bit annoyed, don’t get me wrong. Why should I give my vote to a party that did everything in their hands in the last 6 years to derail independence? But then, when I started to see the rivers of people from the SNP defecting to ALBA, I began to see a different picture.
We have had MPs and councillors defecting. We have had NEC members and from every other important sector of the SNP defecting. We have had ex MPs, ex MSPs, incredibly talented and experienced people. However, there was not a single current candidate standing for an MSP seat in the constituency willing to defect to ALBA.
I wonder if there might be current SNP candidates to the constituency ballot that may well be seeing defecting to ALBA after the election as a possibility, particularly if whoever is leading the party continues down the highway to hell that Sturgeon and her advisors have forced us on.
In the constituency ballot you chose particular candidates, not the party. It is in the list where you choose the party. List MSPs therefore have a more strong reason to follow blindly the whip – as far as I know, they cannot simply declare themselves independent and still expect to retain the seat. But the constituency candidates do not have this problem because it was the individual and not the party what was elected, so they can become independent if they are disgusted with the party.
So if there is a possibility for defections in Holyrood, those will come from the SNP constituencies MSPs, not the list ones.
Do you start to see what I see?
Now, I admit that I am lucky that I do not live in a constituency where Sturgeon, Robertson, Yousaf, Sommerville or Swinney stand, because honestly, I do not think I could see myself voting for any of them if I lived in their constituencies, even if Mr Salmond asked. I would be voting for alternative indy candidates or spoiling my ballot. But none of those 5 look like potential defectors to Alba therefore I don’t think anything would be lost if those 5 were to lose their seats in May.
A resourceful man and good tactician like Mr Salmond may yet have a few cards up his sleeve and I personally I like to think that some of those cards might well be sitting under some SNP constituency candidates. I wonder if that might be the reason why Sturgeon, the British state and their drones in the MSM and broadcasters are in a state of complete panic. And who can blame them? There can be nothing more disconcerting and unsettling for a party leader (and the powers pulling the strings of that party leader) than not knowing for sure what proportion of their own MSPs will be planning to join the opposition when they attempt to bring forward the next vote.
Chris
I agree with all you say ,but the polls still have the SNP winning an overall majority at Holyrood. After all that has happened it looks as if the cultists will still win the day. The big question in my mind is why is Sturgeon so popular? It beggars belief.
Andy Ellis says:
1 April, 2021 at 6:41 pm
@mountain shadow
Geez…give them a chance! There’s stiff in my fridge older than Alba. Still a few weeks til the election. Game on!
Reply
Expect a call from the cops with warrant to search your fridge.
Andy Ellis says:
1 April, 2021 at 6:41 pm
@mountain shadow
Geez…give them a chance! There’s stiff in my fridge older than Alba. Still a few weeks til the election. Game on!
—-
If the poll had said ALBA 20% and I was over the moon, you wouldn’t be telling me to calm down would you?
—
I know this will increase as word gets out, but i was hoping for at least 5 to 7%
de brus says
I literally don’t care how (excluding violence), or with who (corrupt politicians or not), we achieve it
Seriously? So being left as a pleb in an independent Scotland run entirely by corruption and bribery is preferable to how your life is right now?
Personally I’m setting the groundwork for my kids generation to welcome in independence now. Both NS and AS are not deserving of any place in Scottish politics never mind the head of an independent nation
As I said previously, anyone who votes SNP is condoning their behaviour. I know the plan is SNP 1/Alba 2 and it’s a good plan, I understand it and it makes sense but my conscience and integrity will not allow me to ever vote SNP again.
I’ll be voting Alba on the list but I’m going to make sure that I spoil my paper so nobody can tamper with it and mark me down as a vote for SNP.
Having said that of course, mine will be a postal vote, so I kind of expect it to be tampered with. Tampered all the way to a skip in Kirkliston or something.
Looking a bit jaded already. You have managed to alienate potential voters after a week and the candidates are not exactly inspiring.
@mountain shadow
I’m just saying we all need some perspective. Of course I’d love it if it was 20%, but with the relentless focus from the MSM on Salmond’s past and SNP MPs and MSPs obviously waiting to see which way to jump, we have to wait and see.
The only way we were going to get instant results was if a significant chunk of MPs and SNPs, and particularly Cherry, had defected right away.
In truth this could have done with happening weeks ago to give us a longer run-up, but we are where we are. If we don’t get enough %, then at least we tried to influence the 2021 vote, and we have a base to build from for 2026.
As a party Alba need to push what differentiates them from the SNPs divisive polices like GRA, HCB, gender woo generally, and show its radical credentials to distance itself from the gradualism of the SNP on indy and from the neo-liberalism of the Growth Commission and failure to advance a more radical agenda.
As others have pointed out, we need to carve out the space for a more radical pro-indy force to the left of the centrist SNP then make sure it becomes a permanent fixture in the Scottish political environment.
Mountain shadow @6.37
The Survation poll was done 2 weeks ago and ALBA is only 12 days old. Alex said he would give out information tomorrow on M/ship and expects to have more members than the Scottish Lib Dems by tomorrow afternoon.
This is wild speculation on my part, but I reckon we are going to end up with an SNP-Labour coalition.
The understanding will be that the SNP agree not to push for indyref2 in the next parliament, with Labour supporting all manner of legislation. The unwritten part of the agreement is that Alex Salmond is frozen out.
Nothing to back it up, except the world has been batshit crazy for the past 12 months so anything is possible.
I guess we are supposed avoid saying anything offensive towards the SNP and SNP loyalists in the hope that they will give their second votes to Alba.
Fuck all that.
Looking at the way Sturgeon throws the boot in at every opportunity, her unhinged hatred of Salmond, and the suggestion that she’d rather see 32 Unionists sit where 32 Alba MSPs might sit, a growing number of us are naturally going to start reconsidering this “relationship”.
It’s for SNP loyalists to explain why they wouldn’t vote Alba, and it’s for them to explain why they are so loyal to a party that is up to its eyeballs in corruption, sleaze, subterfuge, deceit and lies. They even robbed our “ring fenced” funds, ffs.
It’s for SNP loyalists to explain why we shouldn’t regard them as a bunch of gullible fucking mugs. And that’s a constructive point; if they weren’t so unquestioningly stupid and loyal, it’s possible the lowlife scum that runs that party might have been replaced by now.
Sturgeon, the damage she has done, and the damage she will do, is on you, the loyal lemming-like SNP voters. You own it as much as she does. Explain that to your children and grand children.
Mugs.
The big question in my mind is why is Sturgeon so popular?
The opposition is full of sub-moronic mutants who’d lose a popularity contest if the only other candidates were Judas Iscariot, Myra Hindley and Chlamydia as far as the general public knows Nicola’s wee turn at locking us all up for a year has been a “success”.
” Meg merrilees says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:12 pm
Mountain shadow @6.37
The Survation poll was done 2 weeks ago and ALBA is only 12 days old. Alex said he would give out information tomorrow on M/ship and expects to have more members than the Scottish Lib Dems by tomorrow afternoon.”
================================================================================================================
So poll done before Alba existed. Dirty tricks and dishonesty from Yoon Press. Who would have thunk it?
Some people are afraid of change, it scares them; fear that powerful trigger of the herd instinct.
Repressive governments are dining out on the way they’ve saved the people from the « plague », that actually never was.
When those people finally wake up to the likelihood that the freedoms arbitrarily appropriated by those « democratic » agencies may not be graciously returned, the political climate may change. In politics the weather can turn uncomfortably stormy for those on the summits.
Keep checking the auguries.
In the 2003 Holyrood election, the SSP got 6.7% of list votes.
That gave them 6 seats (of 129 total).
I think the reason for the continued popularity of Sturgeon can be found in Plato’s allegory of the cave.
A it’s party time over in the Village People’s website ” in the Navy and YMCA seems to be a favourites ” , Yeh I know a bit camp and predictable.
The reason for the calibrations are the Poll ” the first one ” by the way, it’s not even a week since the launch and they have them sinking without trace and Alex appear to have morphed into Arthur ( yeh fkd if I know why)
As someone else up stream pointed out they have older food in their fridge than ALBA now why would apparent independence supporters be more concerned about ALBA than the Unionists ? , we definitely know from Dross that the Union have a real threat to contend with , but why are so called nationalists so afraid ? , it might be because their princess Nicola is going to be pressured into actually being forced against her will to push for independence,oh dear how sad .
Ian Brotherhood says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:26 pm
In the 2003 Holyrood election, the SSP got 6.7% of list votes.
That gave them 6 seats (of 129 total).
—
SSP only had support in the central belt really, where as ALBA will broadly be popular across the country, so 10 to 20 seats would be good.
Thinking of alternative strategies for Alba going forward, lets assume that Alba don’t gain enough seats to hold the balance and/or the (unreformed) SNP refuses to co-operate with us. When they don’t deliver a referendum a significant part of their support will be easy pickings for Alba, particularly if Sturgeon does some shady deal with Labour or the LD’s.
If we aren’t in a position to exert direct influence as a result of May’s elections, we need to build up the party, its platform and the “sell” for 2026. Of course we could always hope that the SNP wake up and ditch the Sturgeonistas before 2026, but not sure I’d bet the farm on it.
Maybe we should target the French voters we might get that percentage up a wee bit eh!
Come on , 3% in less than a week and before they we’re even established. It’s nonsense fiddling again ,don’t fall for it.
Remember solidarity, rise , independents could add a few percent to that too . Let’s see what it is next week and week after and see them panic.
FFS – It is only one poll!
Alex took us within 5% of Independence. What have YOU all done to get someone you know to vote ALBA.
I ‘m betting 12-16 seats at least for ALBA.
What about some positive thinking.
I see ALBA are at 3% on the list on a poll that was carried out 3 days after they came into existance. Its a poll for David Clegg’s paper so they are clearly trying to put a stop on the ALBA bandwagon. However a few of things jump out from that poll.
First of all 3% in a poll after only existing for 3 days is brilliant. With margin of error ALBA are already close to the 6% required to start winning seats.
Second ALBA hasn’t stated any policies yet. I think Salmond knows that if a pro-indy party emerges that offers EFTA membership rather than EU he can appeal to the majority of 2014 yes supporters who converted to No due to the SNP’s pro-EU stance. That in the North-East may play very well and in general start to get people like Sillars on board who will bring some more votes. It would also take votes from the Tories as well. Add that to policies that protect women’s rights and you have a policy platform that can take votes.
Third there is a 3% gap between voting intentions on the constituency and the list. I suspect this will be down to votes to smaller parties such as ISP and AFI who were still an option when this poll was carried out. I suspect most of that 3% could now be headed to ALBA.
Fourth – at 3% clearly ALBA has registered to much more effect than AFI or ISP so we do now have a genuine pro-indy list party.
Fifth – with the Libdems at 8% its entirely possible ALBA overtake them on the list.
Last of all both the Tories and Labour vote is marginally down on the list. Could it be ALBA beyond maximising the Yes also minimise the No? Taking a couple of percent from the Tories and Labour may not get ALBA a seat but it might mean the SNP pick up a list seat they wouldn’t be able to reach.
My only concern is time and in particular the amount of time before people will start returning their postal votes. ALBA desperately needs a few weeks to progress and I think Postal votes will be out with postal voters by 29th April.
Okay, can I just point out the bloody obvious that everyone appears to have missed about this Survation Survey? That Alba has only been around since Friday, and these surveys are not snapshots on one day but AVERAGES of those taking part in the survey’s voting intentions over the fortnight.
The result is a party just coming in very late to the ball is weighted down in order to prevent an unrealistic “spike” from its novelty that quickly wears off (eg. the Jury Team honeymoon with the public that never transfered into actual votes – ever!).
It’s the same system of doing things that saw them get it so laughably wrong with the Brexit Party in the last Euro Elections, but over a prolonged period it is usually sound.
@Andy Ellis
Why get up in the morning?
We are all going to die anyway!
How about trying to win instead of “maybe in 5 years”
Andy is crushing the feel good factor before we even vote.
Sturgeon and Murrell’s SNP is worried about unionists losing list seats to a pro independence party.
It is more afraid of non SNP pro independence MSPs than it is of unionist MSPs.
Sturgeon and Murrell’s SNP does not want independence and wants to avoid it at any cost.
Never forget the criminal conspiracy to jail Alex Salmond on false charges.
The discussion on the popularity of Alba (3%) is premature. As it happens I think that’s a great result after a week. No, look at the calibre and profile of the list candidates, in particular the “defectors”. Serious people, serious contacts. The author of this piece being a case in point. Wait till local campaigning starts.
3% will be nothing.
Big Jock says,
“It’s bad enough when Yoons talk about gaming the system. When our own people like Lesley Riddoch start talking about it.”
It just proves that they never were “our own people”. Just opportunists.
Let them expose themselves.
Ian McWhirter next?
“The understanding will be that the SNP agree not to push for indyref2 in the next parliament”
And if they do they will be finished in GE 2024. The game is up. This is their last chance and it has a use by date attached to it.
Either they start delivering and soon or they may be in for a shock at the upcoming council elections in 2022. If they don’t deliver in the next two years, Wishart and all his gravy train journey SNP companions can say good bye to the green seats. Needless to say that by 2026, the SNP will become a piece of memorabilia only to be seen in a museum.
Because, why should we waste time on a party that does not have time for us?
I would not be surprised to see Sturgeon deliberately jeopardising the chances of getting a pro indy supermajority to avoid having to be forced to deliver indyref. Fingers crossed she loses the seat in May.
Time to be civil or ignore Snp voters IMO.
Free Public Transport,
c`mon Alba that`s the vote winner right there.
3% is a decent start i thought,
David Clegg reporting on the demise of Alex again,
what an absolute rancid scoundral of a human being Clegg is.
One poll after a few days of existence. Not very good on the face of it but I’d be interested to see the Brexit Party’s polling history.
Ruby says:
1 April, 2021 at 5:44 pm
Did they say when they’d be at an event by a prominent government funded organisation promoting male health.
They could use this to show how the Government’s men’s health plan will be used, especially as men most likely to die due to covid.
Hi Ruby, comment is not directed at yourself, shoot the messenger and all that.
Since the launch of ALBA, voting SNP1 ALBA2 makes sense.
EXCEPT:
Vote tactically for Sarwar in the Glasgow Southdide constituency to unseat Sturgeon.
That is the only way to get rid of her and it won’t affect the number of SNP or Labour seats in Glasgow:
Rev. Stuart Campbell says (Scheming on a mirage),
“It’s much the same as the Glasgow Southside situation. You’re not choosing between Anas Sarwar and Nicola Sturgeon – Sarwar is top of the Labour list so he’s getting in no matter what happens. What you’re effectively doing with your constituency vote in Glasgow Southside is choosing between two SNP MSPs – Sturgeon or Roza Salih. If you’d prefer Salih, vote Sarwar on the constituency paper.)”
A totally WIN WIN situation for all except the diehard Sturgeonists.
Before the usual suspects come in to distort the situation, we hate Sarwar but he will get in whether or not you vote for him in the constituency.
Why not take this unique opportunity to unseat Sturgeon?
Lying under oath to a parliamentary committee in front of the cameras could not unseat her, that is how corrupt the system has become.
Only the good voters of the Glasgow Southside constituency can give her what she deserves – to be thrown out of parliament and hopefully ending up in jail.
This is not about supporting Sarwar, it is about unseating Sturgeon.
A Person @7.56pm.
3% for ALBA after only about 3 days in existence, imagine what a month will bring, I for one am confident that ALBA will do okay on the 6th of May.
@TheSNPLeftMe 7.70pm
Dial the drama back a few notches, huh? I’d love it if we can speed things up. I joined Alba within hours of it being announced. I’m now – cautiously – optimistic that we can pull something off in time for May’s elections, but isn’t it just common sense to prepare for a less positive outcome?
We shouldn’t just give up, but realistically if the SNP or SNP/Greens win a majority there isn’t a feasible way to make progress until 2026 is there? I mean…correct me if I’m wrong..? Absent a palace coup in the SNP, the only way to do something before 2026 would be the government resigning, or a super majority voting for new elections. Turkeys – even SNP turkeys – don’t vote for Christmas.
With climate change, the seasons are all getting confused, and mixed up with each other. So are the birds. So are the politicians. So are the dates. You see, we all think it’s April Fools Day today but actually – in case no one noticed – actually, it’s Hallowe’en.
Moreover, American-style Hallowe’en, even here in Scotland (the continents must be getting confused as well). Which means that ghastly expression – ‘Trick or Treat?’ The answer might be both. Especially for traditional ‘No’ voters – they can have it all.
The Lady who has tricked Scots out of ever gaining independence would be very annoyed if they saw through her trick and, as a consequence … they then woke up and ‘tricked’ their way into gaining that very thing which she wants to prevent them from ever having.
She wants to stop them gaming the system, because if they win THEIR game she loses HER game.
So, if I was a Unionist (which I am not) I too would game the system. By ‘treating’ myself to a very simple little ‘trick’. Instead of voting Labour, Tory or Lib Dem on the constituency (which in many a constituency is a wasted vote) I’d vote for Sturgeon’s No Party (SNP) instead.
That will give them enough MSPs to ensure that they get what the want. Namely, a very small simple majority, or at least a minority which is still enough to become the biggest Party in Holyrood, so that they still lead the next Scottish Government.
And like that, I’ll get what I want – Sturgeon’s No Party doing all it can to impede or prevent independence. That would be a ‘treat’, even if my vote had been a ‘trick’.
Of course, it might not work if this new Alba thing reduces number of Labour, Tory and Lib Dem seats currently gained on the List. But maybe – hopefully – our Unionist friend won’t be clever enough to work that out.
Honestly – the games that people play…! There is no end to it. When others are trying to trick you, you are really not supposed to let them … There are no prizes for being a gullible fool. Be wise as a serpent (especially when you’re engaging in the snake-pit of modern politics, where many games are played) and simple as a dove. Especially the latter …
https://archive.is/GlpyG
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”
Alba 3% is a national poll. Please bear in mind that ALBA only need about 6% in a regional area to start picking up seats. So they could be 7% in Glasgow but 3% in Edinburgh. We just don’t know.
It’s one poll after one week. I can only see it going up.
“Salmond trying to trick way to independence, says Sturgeon”
What did you do to get independence between 2016 and 2019 when Scotland was being taken out of the EU against its will, you corrupt lying criminal of a tractor?
Stand shoulder to shoulder with disgraceful Blair spin doctor Alistair Campbell to undemocratically deny Brexit to England, that is what.
You tricked your way into denying Scotland independence.
You are the biggest obstacle to independence.
Agree that discussion on Alba popularity premature.
Think however that the party will need to differentiate itself in a couple of ways.
Chief among these is disavowing folk of the notion that voting for Alba is “just the same as voting Green, as they are both pro-Indy”. This should be done by pointing out as often as possible that the Greens have done nothing to push independence along, despite having the numbers in Parliament ti do so alongside the SNP for five years.
There are other areas where I imagine policies will differ and hopefully these will be stressed after being settled on at the candidate conference I’ve heard mentioned.
Although Alba’s watchword has been “positivity” (and broadly speaking l like that for making the electorate confident if the country’s capabilities, they will need to stress how others have failed to progress independence to differentiate themselves. Some negativity about others’ failings is needed if you’re going to say what you’re adding to proceedings.
Bartleby64 @4.57
Even if you vote against Swinney on the constituency vote (or spoil it) – It is imperative that you vote ALBA on the list vote. This ensures that you do not contribute anything to the SNP.
“Oh dear!” said the cat. “You do not like our game . .
Oh dear. What a shame! What a shame! What a shame!”
For years now I’ve followed and, almost always, totally agreed with the opinions and writings of Peter Bell.
On the Alba Party (Indeed ALL other pro-indy, list parties) however, he appears to have a total mental blockage. Every word which emanates from him on the subject is absolute, undiluted, mentalist claptrap and, next to him, King Canute was the epitome of reason.
Riddoch as well? WTAF is going on with the thought processes of these people? Are they Minchurian (sic) Candidates; programmed to explode with steaming shite upon hearing the phrase ‘Super Majority’?
AdamH,
“Personally, I am in favour of PR because I believe that everyone deserves representation, even those with whom I disagree.”
So am I.
Sturgeon and many SNP MSPs used to get elected on the list vote despite being defeated in the constituencies or mot standing in the constituency at all.
ALBA is seeking a democratic vote.
But the SNP is anti democracy.
Just see how all those democratically defeated wokes cheated their way back into the SNP’s NEC.
Isn’t putting obnoxious BAME and Disabled candidates at the top of SNP lists despite getting miniscule votes “gaming the system”?
Not to forget the candidates with fake self declared disabilities.
Will Sturgeon “trick her way” into parliament if she is defeated in her Glasgow Southside constituency?
Will she push Roza Salih under the bus or will she bribe her with an offer she can’t refuse?
P. Harvie
I’m not that bothered about independence, one way or another”
Just what he said in a church hall in Knightswood, Gla, pre-referendum.
@ Kcor at 8.28pm
Indeed, gaming the system seems the preferred modus operandi of certain folk in the SNP.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/how-to-make-a-coup/
@alzyerpal 8.22pm
Bloviator Bell has been going none too quietly off his trolley for some time. He’s quite beyond reason on “pop up” parties. Must be something of a crisis of confidence given recent events. A good proportion of his recent weight loss has apparently been between the ears.
He’s now retweeting Listvotesense. Enough said.
Sturgeon has accused Alex Salmond of being a gambler.
She is such a coward that she could not go for independence when the chances of winning were at least 70%.
How did the once radical SNP end up with such a coward as leader?
She is so devious and fake, even the extremely astute Alex Salmond could not see through her during the 30 years he mentored her and helped her get to the top.
Perfect British intelligence services operative, along with her pal Leslie Evans.
Both of them have been caught and hopefully will end up in jail soon.
At HE 2016 – the Greens got 6.6%, the LDs 5.something%.
3% in 6 days is a Very good start.
Now here’s the problem. The Media is going to blanket ignore Alba.
Nicla is going to scupper her own Constituency candidates chances – talk of Alex cheating his way to Indy is not aimed at No Voters, or Undecided – that is aimed fair and square at pissing off the SNP voters. Remember the Supermajority relies on SNP 1 Alba 2.
In order to combat both – we need to be campaigning in a Covid and Hi Viz Way, and we are going to have to selectively campaign on behalf of some of the SNP candidates.
Or we lose. Nicla won’t lose, we will.
We really need a Do’s and Don’t list of what is allowed for Covid Safe Campaigning.
Engender. Position on GRA largely supportive of the SNP.
https://www.engender.org.uk/news/blog/frequently-asked-questions-womens-equality-and-the-gender-recognition-act/
Should have added of course they are because they’re Holyrood funded
@ Andy Ellis
Crikey, re-tweeting ListVoteSense isn’t the smart move if one wants to maintain a degree of credibility.
I’d like to see a ListVoteNonsense account started to rebut the lame pish ListVoteSense punt out.
These roasters seem unable to comprehend that the reason so many Indy folk are now looking at and considering alternatives to cast their 2nd votes for is because of the batshit crazy behaviour and policies being pushed by both the SNP and Greens.
You’re out for a walk on a scorchio hot tappsaff day in Scotland (so about 4 deg C) and feel like some refreshment.
There are two pubs in front of you, one serves nice tasty crystal clear cool refreshing lager, the other serves warm cloudy week old piss collected from a Tennents Super drinking alcoholic, with added chunks of shit in it.
You get to choose which you’d prefer to imbibe…
Bartleby64 says,
“I am actively considering giving my list vote to Alba. My problem is this; my hope is to get rid of Swinney but Mr. Salmond is in effect encouraging people to vote for the likes of Swinney.”
Alex Salmond is obviously not going to single out any SNP candidates not to vote for.
That is where we, the people, need to use our own initiative.
Vote tactically against Sturgeon in Glasgow Southside.
Vote tactically against Swinney in his constituency.
Vote tactically for the candidate most likely to beat Robertson.
The most obnoxious of them have to be actively voted out, not by abstaining or spoiling the ballot but by voting tactically for the candidate most likely to unseat them.
In Glasgow Southside, Sturgeon can be unseated without the loss of an SNP seat.
In Swinney’s constituency if a unionist wins the seat, then their chances of a list MSP will go down.
So I don’t think ALBA will be affected. Instead of competing with the unionist list vote, it will be competing with the SNP list vote.
I am sure we will get some very good calculations by the Rev. Stuart Campbell nearer the election to help us make up our minds.
@ re
Andy Ellis says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:31 pm
Thinking of alternative strategies for Alba going forward, lets assume that Alba don’t gain enough seats to hold the balance and/or the (unreformed) SNP refuses to co-operate with us. When they don’t deliver a referendum a significant part of their support will be easy pickings for Alba, particularly if Sturgeon does some shady deal with Labour or the LD’s.
If we aren’t in a position to exert direct influence as a result of May’s elections, we need to build up the party, its platform and the “sell” for 2026. Of course we could always hope that the SNP wake up and ditch the Sturgeonistas before 2026, but not sure I’d bet the farm on it.’
That rSNP would refuse to ditch Nicla and/or would refuse to team up with Alba and fight Scotlands corner is almost a given. What I think Alba would be in a good position to do then, is campaign for the GE to be Plebiscite Indy. They’ve got 4 years after all, during which time Britain will be attempting to destroy Scotland. They will also be in a position to welcome home SNP MP’s and SNP genuine about Indy.
Personally I think this is what is going to happen. One way or another the gravy train is coming to the end of the line for some.
@Red says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:19 pm
The big question in my mind is why is Sturgeon so popular?
Well if you had been bunged 3 million quid and know her aspirations are being FM for five more years as she believes in devolution, hence the MSM protection racket to keep the status quo.
Red says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:1?
Just been reading the article about the ballet school.
‘An ITV investigation into the school last year found more than 60 women had made allegations of inappropriate behaviour against a teacher.’
60 women made allegations!!!
Weird that ITV were doing the investigation.
Thank you for all replies. As for Scotland having no debt, in your dreams. Divorce has always been an expensive business. As for being on my knees to anyone that would be God alone.
@alzyerpal says: 1 April, 2021 at 8:22 pm
“For years now I’ve followed and, almost always, totally agreed with the opinions and writings of Peter Bell.
On the Alba Party (Indeed ALL other pro-indy, list parties) however, he appears to have a total mental blockage. Every word which emanates from him on the subject is absolute, undiluted, mentalist claptrap and, next to him, King Canute was the epitome of reason.”
I’ll take your word for it on his erudition. Personally he’s come across to me as a weapons grade shitgibbon hoping to pick up disaffected WoS readers – much the same way Tom Gordon at The Herald if recent events are anything to go by.
“Thinker. Listener. Talker. Reader. Writer.” … he should have just written “Twat” and saved his fingers the superfluous keystrokes.
@Daisy Walker says:
1 April, 2021 at 8:57 pm
We really need a Do’s and Don’t list of what is allowed for Covid Safe Campaigning.
Put a mask over all SNP and Yoon leaflets leaving AlBA ones open as a ray of sunshine. lol
Lots of moaning about candidates and who they are…not necessarily from here, so here’s the full list, instead of decrying credentials why don’t people just check them out for themselves. The candidates all got a chance to introduce themselves and their credentials earlier today, bar a few tech hiccups, this gives a wee insight into the calibre of those candidates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ILTL0G4eI
Also IanB posted this press conference from Alex upthread, again earlier today, worth a watch too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM4FZ0qjq-s
South Scotland
Cynthia Guthrie
Corri Wilson
Suzanne Blackley
Laurie Flynn
Lothian
Kenny MacAskill MP
Alex Arthur
Christina Hendry
Irshad Ahmed
Glasgow
Cllr Michelle Fearns
Ailsa Gray
Cllr Shahid Farooq
Lynn McMahon
North East Scotland
Alex Salmond
Heather McLean
Cllr Brian Topping
Dot Jessiman
West Scotland
Cllr Chris McEleny
Cllr Caroline McAllister
Cllr Ellen McMaster
Delia Henry
Central Scotland
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh
Cllr Lynne Anderson
Dr Jim Walker
Margaret Lynch
Mid Scotland and Fife
Eva Comrie
Neale Hanvey MP
Jim Eadie
Stephanie Reilly
Highlands and Islands
Kirk Torrance
Craig Berry
Josh Robertson
Judith Reid
@Daisy Walker, 9:11. I think we also need to factor in the impending case agains Evans. If the judge does his duty this ought to bring to light all the evidence that Salmond has complained about being covered up. This ought to bring down Sturgeon and Robertson plus others. With luck it will put them in gaol.
If this works out, I think we could reasonably predict that Alex will have the next moves already planned and ready.
Just got my email from eck , Goan yersel
Remember Boris informed the EU that no deal
would mean no divorce bill payment.
I like the idea of taking this tip from him and being one of the
very few nations on earth with no debt would be a wonderful start.
Also agree with Boris that no Sovereign nation should be dictated to by
another country.
I have been taking in all that has been said over the last few days and I fully understand the logic of SNP1 Alba2, but for me to vote SNP is to condone their disgraceful and criminal behaviour under Sturgeon. In my constituency there is a perfectly good, decent SNP candidate who, in earlier days, I would have no hesitation in supporting. But then I think, if she is a decent, moral, and hard working individual as I believe her to be, why is she still a member of this scumbag party? In fact why are any of the decent ones left still members of this cesspit?
Perhaps many will jump ship after the election, I certainly hope so, but without that certainty I cannot vote SNP. As a measure of how disgusted I feel I did intend to vote for their main challenger who happens to be a Tory, but I am now swithering as to whether to just spoil my ballot instead. I guess it will all depend on how much Sturgeon annoys me between now and the election. One thing is for sure I will never vote SNP again unless Sturgeon and all her cronies are cleared out. Even then it would be a hard call.
I am happy to say that my wife and I are now Alba members and feel comfortable with our new home. We will be doing what I can to influence friends and relatives to follow suit. The dream is independence and to see Sturgeon, Murrell Swinney, Wolffe, Evans and a few others being tried, convicted and jailed for what they have done to our country.
Hi Fred, thanks for replying (maybe not the “pleb” part though!)
Fred says:
1 April, 2021 at 7:01 pm
de brus says
I literally don’t care how (excluding violence), or with who (corrupt politicians or not), we achieve it
Seriously? So being left as a pleb in an independent Scotland run entirely by corruption and bribery is preferable to how your life is right now?
Personally I’m setting the groundwork for my kids generation to welcome in independence now. Both NS and AS are not deserving of any place in Scottish politics never mind the head of an independent nation
There are a couple of reasons I say this:
1. Show me a politician at the top, anywhere, then argue seriously that they are not corrupt in some way. The idea of corruption, when it comes to politics, is purely subjective to those involved.
2. I want to see Scotland become independent, which is why I have voted the way I have for 30 years. This does not mean that I will be voting the same way after we achieve this. Independence is the goal, life after that … that’s something else.
@Daisy Walker 1 April, 2021 at 2:07 pm
“90% of all UK fresh water based in Scotland.”
This is just rubbish, its “90% of surface water ” and not “drinking water” most of it in the Far NW of highland Scotland and completely boggin (literally)
“Daily exporters of Electricity to England – do we import it from them – no we don’t.”
Well actually yes we do, when the wind isn’t blowing the windmills are not turning so leccy comes south to North Via the Grid , it even sometimes comes from France via the European innterconnector. The excess of Scottish Wind energy we produce is mostly during the night and apart from being used to refill Hydro elecric pumped systems isn’t much good for nowt at all.
“Self sufficient and exporting – food.
We are not self sufficient in Food , try not to be so bl**dy dim.
“Whisky. Not even going to go there, but the yearly income generated – in one year – from Islay was £1 billion. All registered via the HQ’s in London”
This is more complete bullshit, thats not Tax Revenues and Taxes don’t go to “HQ’s” Alex Salmond himself made that clear during Indyref that Taxes are levied at the points of “economic activity” Don’t folk even pay any attention to what SNP leaders state themselves ? A full list of taxes received by Scot Gov and how they are levied is available on the Scot Gov website.
“Anyway when you get the facts”
Well you didn’t so are you going to go to the Scot Gov website and get properly educated ? Quite frankly it feckin embarrassing how much complete bollocks so many people blindly repeat yet laughingly call themselves “informed Scots” its a national embarrassment in fact. The SNP Scottish Government publish all this stuff for you on its own website to actually properly understand.
Elmac says:
1 April, 2021 at 9:25 pm
I have been taking in all that has been said over the last few days and I fully understand the logic of SNP1 Alba2, but for me to vote SNP is to condone their disgraceful and criminal behaviour under Sturgeon
1. condone it
2. vote yes
3. vote for someone else afterwards
de brus @ 9.29
Emphatically NO!
Elmac says:
1 April, 2021 at 9:32 pm
de brus @ 9.29
Emphatically NO!
Okay then! Don’t complain when we are having the same conversations in four years’ times though!
Morag says (To the National Secretary),
“Now, about the coronavirus. I am a recently-retired expert in disease control and I can tell you that Scotland’s handling of this epidemic, under Nicola Sturgeon, has been atrocious.”
Morag, on a slow news day, with the Rev’s permission, could you not give your expert opinion on the coronavirus, how it has been (mis)handled and your opinion on the vaccines?
De Brus – “1. Show me a politician at the top, anywhere, then argue seriously that they are not corrupt in some way. The idea of corruption, when it comes to politics, is purely subjective to those involved.”
Holyrood was set-up to be fight corruption in all its forms. David MacLetchie (remember him) was bagged for over-claiming taxi receipts. McLeish and Alexander for similar small-potatoes offences.
What’s going-on at Holyrood now eclipses all of that many times over and should not be acceptable. This is not somthing you can fix later. It is now endemic at Holyrood and the systems there are so lax they allow it to happen.
Holyrood is a giant house of cards. That’s the way it has always seemed to me. Started reasonably well in 2000, but has been sucked into the vortex.
@Elizabeth Hagan 9.17pm
If you mean assuming responsibility for UK debt, the default position in international law and precedent is that a seceding entity has zero liability for the debt of the “larger” state. In a minority of cases the smaller entity has agreed to assume responsibility for a share. The SNP plan in 2014 was to take a proportionate amount. The Irish had agreed to assume a proportion of UK debt in 1921, but it was essentially written off in return for them accepting the border with Northern Ireland the UK had drawn. It would also depend on a share of UK assets being agreed: however given the size of the UK debt, I’d be more than happy to take zero debt and zero share of assets.
As for “debt” in terms of whether we can pay our way and raise more than we spend, current figures tell us nothing about post independence finances. You don’t know what taxes the Scottish government will raise or lower, what areas they can make savings in (defence for a start). What we do know is that nobody should seriously believe that Scotland could not thrive as an independent country when so many others – with few of our advantages – have managed just fine.
You’ve been provided above with numerous sources which attempt to counter the Project Fear myths from 2012-14.
Of course, while you can lead a horse to water you can’t force it to drink.
Elmac says,
“The dream is independence and to see Sturgeon, Murrell Swinney, Wolffe, Evans and a few others being tried, convicted and jailed for what they have done to our country.”
May your dream come true, very soon!
O/T,
Does anyone know if Judy Murray, the mother of Andy Murray, is a strong supporter of Sturgeon?
Is she very rich, someone who could easily spare something like £200,000?
Captain Yossarian says:
1 April, 2021 at 9:40 pm
De Brus – “1. Show me a politician at the top, anywhere, then argue seriously that they are not corrupt in some way. The idea of corruption, when it comes to politics, is purely subjective to those involved.”
Holyrood was set-up to be fight corruption in all its forms. David MacLetchie (remember him) was bagged for over-claiming taxi receipts. McLeish and Alexander for similar small-potatoes offences.
What’s going-on at Holyrood now eclipses all of that many times over and should not be acceptable. This is not somthing you can fix later. It is now endemic at Holyrood and the systems there are so lax they allow it to happen.
Holyrood is a giant house of cards. That’s the way it has always seemed to me. Started reasonably well in 2000, but has been sucked into the vortex.
“Holyrood was set-up to be fight corruption in all its forms.” What on earth does this actually mean? No parliament is set up with the express desire to condone corruption.
You think there were 1. taxi receipts … and then 2. the current mess? And nothing worse? Don’t be silly.
2 points
As has been mentioned Membership will be announced tomorrow AND
expectations are that Alba will have MORE MEMBERS than the Lib Dems
While not ruling out legal action to get on the debates Alex did say that Labour had pretty hefty legal fees to try and get Anas Sarwar on their logo for electoral commission. It does not appear a likely route for Alba based on the way he posed the response
Maths was never my strong point. With regard to the poll everyone is talking about, am I correct in thinking the results for all Parties concerned were given as an ‘average’ of polls taken during a 12-day period? And also that Alba only existed for the last 3 of these 12 days?
If so, I am wondering i) how many polls they took during the 12 days and then ii) how they calculated the average. Let’s say they took a poll every day. That would mean each Party other than Alba has twelve numbers to be added together and divided by 12, in order to give an average.
However, if they applied that to Alba, Alba must be doing astronomically well. During the first 9 days they got nothing, then over the next three they must have averaged 36% so that when you divide 36 by 12 you get 3! Wow!
That hardly seems likely, however. Let’s say they were fair, and only counted what Alba averaged over the 3 votes on the last 3 days of the poll. That means the 3 days must have totalled 9 points, so that 9 divided by 3 ends up at 3. These 3 poll might well have been increasing daily – for instance at 1 on the first of the three days (because most people had not heard of Alba yet), at 3 on the second day, and et 5 on the third day.
1 +3 + 5 = 9. Divide 9 by 3 and you get 3.
That’s not bad at all. Actually, it’s excellent. So why is anyone worried?
Of course, the calculation could be all wrong, and there are many other factors that are hid from our eyes.
But you always have to wonder: What kind of game is being played here? And who is playing it? Who is trying to ‘trick’ who?
I wonder …
It’s regional support that counts on the list.
The Liberals are showing nationally at 8%, which I find hard to believe.
However. Does anyone think the liberals will get more than 2% in Glssgow? While Alba could be as high as 6% in Glasgow.
I want to see a few polls and the regional break down.
Are Sturgeon and Murray lovers?
It might be the menopause. She is showing classic signs including memory loss.
@ Mark Boyle
You’ve described that man to a tee, I stopped reading his crap a long time ago,
What really pisses me off about him is the derogatory way he talked about the list parties that formed such as ISP who were trying to make a difference on the list, I agree they weren’t likely to make an impact but at least they were trying to do something and all this great thinker could do is slag them off
According to him anybody who disagrees with him is an idiot
You’re right Mark the man’s a f@cking Twat
Elmac – “The dream is independence and to see Sturgeon, Murrell Swinney, Wolffe, Evans and a few others being tried, convicted and jailed for what they have done to our country. “.
I couldn’t agree more.
Here is the rub – if you don’t vote SNP in the constituency. Then you lower the Alba result.
Imagine if sturgeon and the woke get over 50 of the the constituency seats and then lose a significant proportion of that vote to Alba on the list.
And alba get 20 or more MSPs.
She’s gone. (And she sees that scenario – hence her very worried look and very rapidly changing strategies). Hence no further action regarding Margaret Ferrier ( I predict a warm welcome back into the bosom of the SNP {until they can safely deal with her later}) if she agrees both votes SNP.
Mr Salmond has always had the people of Scotland’s interests at heart. He says SNP 1 and Alba 2.
Please, please follow his advice ( I am certain he is no fan of mrs murrell ) and vote SNP1 (unless you are in sturgeon, yusuf, swinney or angus robertson macbeth’s constituency). And Alba 2.
Do this and we will get results. I trust Mr Salmond.
No one, and I mean no one trusts, mrs murrell.
Yes I read the poll as meaning that they averaged 9% over the end three days which would be an excellent outcome.
And as others say it does still depend on concentration of vote, who the hell is voting Liberal in Glasgow?
Not trying to paint a rosy scenario here just how it looks to me.
John Martini says:
1 April, 2021 at 9:59 pm
It might be the menopause. She is showing classic signs including memory loss.
Well, there it is, ladies. John Martini has the answer you needed to hear. Now you know.
Astonished…
“Here is the rub – if you don’t vote SNP in the constituency. Then you lower the Alba result.”
Whilst throwing myself under an X15 bus is a more attractive proposition, I’ve reluctantly concluded the same and will, bucket for vomitus in hand, exit the polling booth having voted SNP-1 ALBA-2.
Damn you Sturgeon, and your cozy-Devo’ Woke minions.
“Game the system”. after what we have just witnessed in Holyrood?
Yet another Opinium Poll out tonight just completed it a minute ago (2nd one today)
Scottish questions only apart who would make best PM.
Mainly about Sturgeon V Salmond eg: who do you believe
Which one lied / who has Scotlands best interest at heart etc.
Various coalition paring stated choose best one etc.
ALBA included.
When should referendum be held.
Anyhoo! should get the results pretty quick.
————————————————————-
PS:
New LIst Party says Bella Cal:
‘Scotland Together Launched’ tonight
Jim Sillars & Ally McCoist and some others.
No referendum for a while they say best get covid sorted no rush to a vote…etc etc.
They must be worried 🙂
@de brus
Knowingly voting for corruption and the destruction of Scottish freedoms and liberties?
Well you be you, off you go and support people who want you gagged and caged.
You’ll be lucky if you even get a vote after another five years of the SNP in power.
Not one SNP MSP openly opposed Nicola and her policies.
@call me dave
The article in Bella was by Joe King.
Robert Knight – “Damn you Sturgeon, and your cozy-Devo’ Woke minions.” .
ZIGACKTLY
Lots and lots of us are figuring the best way to damn sturgeon –
SNP1 and Alba 2.
New List Party
Assuming they missed the deadline to register candidates for 6th May @call me dave says at 10:17 pm
Not going to give Small Mike the website traffic by checking for myself.
Huntigowk! ?? Bella Cal story.
I nearly made it through the whole day too…let my guard down too
early….Jings! Oh Well! (Fleetwood Mac) 🙁
Chris says:
Not one SNP MSP openly opposed Nicola and her policies.
… you could call that loyalty.
Kcor
There is a rumour that Sturgeon bought Judy Murray`s house. Obviously cant confirm if it is true.
How is the property boundary delineated @ McDuff says at 10:34 pm, is it RINGFENCED?
😉
Ayeright
Its an April fool.
Anyone like me who’s in the NE region should vote Alba in the List vote. No excuse not to.
@de brus
They owe loyalty to their constituents, the people they are elected to represent, first and foremost.
Loyalty to a party leader, under all circumstances, is cowardice and/or corrupt.
I realise it is common amongst politicians, but isn’t 100% in other parties. There is something wrong with those the SNP select, they used to select better quality people.
There is something deeply rotten in the SNP and it needs to be burnt down and replaced by a better, cleaner more open party.
Independence should be the aim not being woke/socialist and anti-conservative.
McDuff says:
1 April, 2021 at 10:34 pm
“Kcor
There is a rumour that Sturgeon bought Judy Murray`s house. Obviously cant confirm if it is true.”
Is Judy Murray a supporter of independence?
Is she a Sturgeonist?
Astonished says,
“vote SNP1 (unless you are in sturgeon, yusuf, swinney or angus robertson macbeth’s constituency). And Alba 2.”
Yes.
Get the most obnoxious ones defeated in the constituences at least.
They will have “gamed the system” if they get back in on the list!
Will they then dare to claim that Alex Salmond gamed the system?
https://caltonjock.com/2021/04/01/gordon-brown-hijacked-charities-for-the-labour-party-and-created-a-monster/
Long after the 2010 General Election election defeat came the realization that Gordon Brown really was a clever planner. In his last two years in office, he started preparing for a new kind of opposition. Labour might be turfed out of government, but it would carry on the fight through charities, quangos and think tanks. At one time Brown had a team in Downing Street devoted to appointments in public bodies, carefully building what would become a kind of government-in-exile. If the Tories tried anything radical – like welfare reform – then Labour’s new fifth columnists would strike.
@Kcor
You are Anas Sarwar and I claim my £5.
Any one know what the Alba party is polling at. I have just been told by an anti Alex sturgeonite, they are only polling at 3%…..
Why should Sturgeon be buying the mother of a multimillionaire a house for a measly £200K ?
I suspect that sort of money wouldn’t buy the Murray’s garage block. Was it a duck house in the lake perhaps?
For the first time in seven years, Nicola realises that her position and her ambition are under serious threat.
She has run her course.
@ wull at 9.52
I don’t believe that opinion polls are “averages” in the way that you have described, though I should say I have not been able to find a definitive statement to that effect. It’s possible it varies from pollster to pollster.
My understanding is that they “interview” voters (face to face, by phone, or – more commonly – by sending out surveys to people who have signed up for the particular pollster’s on-line panel) over a period of several days, unless they need an urgent snapshot of opinion.
Not everyone who is sent an invitation will reply. When the end-date is reached, or sooner if the company has sufficient responses, the poll will close. At that point the data are weighted for variables like age, sex, past vote, social class, etc, to make the sample as representative of the population as possible.
The results are then published, initially as headline results, but the data tables must also be published within a certain period so that the effect of the weighting can be seen.
They won’t do lots of separate polls over the period, and then average the results. But if something happens during the period the poll runs for, that will potentially have an effect.
In this case, the launch of a party during the poll could
a) mean that respondents who had submitted their answers already might have given a different response after the launch
b) there could be a “honeymoon” effect during the initial furore.
So this first poll is not that significant, I suspect. I’ve been asked about Alba twice today in different polls (as has CallmeDave – not sure if his are the same two as mine!). Polls conducted entirely after the launch will be much more useful.
Re: the poll in The Courier (by Survation) showing Alba on 3%.
According to Survation, their latest Scottish poll…
“25th March 2021 – Survation conducted an online poll of 2,047 people aged 16+ living in Scotland on behalf of DC Thomson. Fieldwork was 11th-18th March 2021. Data tables can be found here.”
The link for the data tables…
https://cdn.survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/30085827/Survation-DC-Thomson-Scotland-Survey-Tables-21.xlsx
Alba has been in existence since January. Both ISP and AFI were formed last year.
Why concentrate on the newest party, Alba, while ignoring the older parties, ISP and AFI?
Draw your own conclusions.
@callmedave
Bella Caledonia would appear to be playing an English April Fool In our huntigowk they’re the gowk for trying it on after midday.
Thanks, crazycat @ 11.07. You are no doubt correct. I agree that we will probably have to wait another 3 or even 4 weeks before any polling on Alba is likely to give indicators of any significance.
Maybe what I was trying to do was simply counteract a kind of knee-jerk reaction on the part of anyone who presumes too quickly that 3% after only 3 days of existence is a negative result. no such conclusions should be drawn, especially when we do not know the detail of i) how the poll was taken, and ii) how the 3% figure arrived at.
Actually, it looks pretty good to me, as does the membership take-up. But that conclusion should not be drawn either, certainly not with any certainty. It is all too early to say. Nevertheless, I think it can be affirmed the signs so far are in no way discouraging for Alba supporters. There is still everything to play and strive for.
Couple of updates on James Kelly site tonight re: polling
Also seems he’s getting pelters for getting behind ALBA a wee bit.
https://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/
I was trying to watch the update of Alex speaking today.
That is the second time whoever is responsible for the tech has F*C*ED IT UP. Either they cannot do it. Or they are deliberately mucking it up.
Alba – please, please get it sorted.
Daisy
It is not entirely the techies fault – if the signal is poor or if there is no signal then it clearly won’t work.
They might be better to have a set of pre-recorded short videos which can be played in and a telephone connection for a bit of live exchange.
Internet is clearly not ideal for the more remote areas. Of course, we don’t know if other perpetrators (77th unit) are jamming signals for a bit of ‘fun’ – who knows.
Certainly it would be worth a few more sound engineers and skilled operators volunteering their services and using more phone links.
Apologies – I said upthread that ALBA had been around for 12 days. Of course it has only been around for 6 as it launched last Friday.
Personally, I think 3% is a great start and there are probably a lot more members to be processed yet.
Wow already at 3% before my hubby even knew it existed. She is now on board.
Onward and upwards.
Re Judy Murray’s House – it has been sold for £753,000 apparently – a snip it would seem. £22,000 than she paid for it.
https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/lifestyle/property/news/a3083/judy-murray-sells-scottish-mansion/
Why wouldn’t NS buy it – it’s a nice house, lovely views and if she is leaving the SNP anytime soon she might want to live outside Glasgow. Ideal for an ex First Minister’s abode if you like that sort of house.
call me dave @ 11:35 pm
“Also seems he’s getting pelters for getting behind ALBA a wee bit.”
That makes a change. Kelly was vehemently all for SNP1 & 2 in 2016 and rejected arguments from those of us who said that D’Hondt could lead to a #Supermajority for indy. That’s why I never read his stuff, same as WGD, and the bella dud.
This idea that there’s political division amongst independence supporters, with Sturgeonists on one side and Salmondists on the other, is insulting to the intelligence.
If there’s division, the fault line should be explained as follows;
1) those who know Sturgeon is an unhinged crackpot who will say and do anything to further her own personal interests.
2) those who don’t.
@ Meg merrilees says:
1 April, 2021 at 11:50 pm
Daisy
It is not entirely the techies fault – if the signal is poor or if there is no signal then it clearly won’t work.’
OK, I get what your saying, but its really bad. How about a bit of belt and braces and they get the journalists to e-mail the question in writing, in addition to verbally, then if reception breaks up Alex can read out the question and answer it.
Or hold it back an hour before broadcasting it and edit out the bits where the interference was too bad.
Let’s face it.
If any of us were in Nicola Sturgeon’s position, or for that matter, Boris Johnson’s, the last thing we would want would be widespread clarity among the electorate about the truth of what was actually going on.
We would most likely therefore opt for a strategy of either delay or of confusion, and would settle for a mixture of both.
Let’s check.
Yep. From Nicola Sturgeon we get the ‘if I’m re-elected’ script, along with the ‘this ‘gaming the system’ may not actually be totally alright or lawful’ argument.
So, nothing new. We are being played.
Have you noticed that there has been lots of tv newsreel and pictures which show Nicola leaving her home. This tells you Nicola lives here. Honest.
“we hate Sarwar but he will get in”
Hate is a very strong emotion; I very rarely resort to it.
“dislike” I’m quite content with.
Andy. Hello did you know that Onanism is bad for you? Has this lockdown finally gotten to you? Aren’t you getting a little jaded? So many questions I know but I think it’s important for a Christian to offer help where it is needed. Do you have a Bible at all? If not would you like one of God’s cherubim to deliver one to you? If so I’ll advise the delivery cherub to wear clothes as we wouldn’t want to excite your Onanistic urges. SNP 1st vote Alba 2nd vote.
The Rules of the Politics Game.
1. There is no need to tell the electorate the truth.
2. Just tell them what you want them to believe.
3.The truth doesn’t actually matter.
4.50% of the electorate are below average intelligence. Concentrate on them. Ignore the other 50%.
5.The end justifies the means. So tell any lie, any amount of times, with a straight face. This is the path to success in modern politics.
Donald Trump, his pal Boris Johnson, together with his Scottish MSP’s, and now even Nicola Sturgeon, after becoming Scotland’s First Minister, all stick by these rules.
Why? Because this is how the (politics) game is played.
Alf Baird says:
2 April, 2021 at 12:01 am
call me dave @ 11:35 pm
“Also seems he’s getting pelters for getting behind ALBA a wee bit.”
That makes a change. Kelly was vehemently all for SNP1 & 2 in 2016 and rejected arguments from those of us who said that D’Hondt could lead to a #Supermajority for indy. That’s why I never read his stuff, same as WGD, and the bella dud.
=================================================================================================================
The Yoons and the Sturgeon Cult trolls are baying for his blood now. Well since he went SNP 1 and Alba 2 that is. He has found the light on the path to Damascus even if it is 5 years late. But then we had no Alba Party 5 years ago and the Greens have been even more .
I meant to add the Greens have been even more Wokist than the SNP. The Greens have got so bad they drove out Andy Wightman as he wouldn’t tow the Harvie line.
There was only one Brus a great Scottish king and warrior. Who’s the imposter?
They might be better to have a set of pre-recorded short videos which can be played in and a telephone connection for a bit of live exchange.
That’s a great idea. The YouTube channel needs a bit of TLC too, I’m hoping they’ll take the opportunity to make more social media friendly content available asap. Nobody watches party political broadcasts anymore, social media is the propaganda battleground.
Short, punchy, preferably entertaining messages that are simple, honest and true.
Long after the 2010 General Election election defeat came the realization that Gordon Brown really was a clever planner. In his last two years in office, he started preparing for a new kind of opposition. Labour might be turfed out of government, but it would carry on the fight through charities, quangos and think tanks. At one time Brown had a team in Downing Street devoted to appointments in public bodies, carefully building what would become a kind of government-in-exile. If the Tories tried anything radical – like welfare reform – then Labour’s new fifth columnists would strike.
Sure, but you’re thinking of “Labour” and “Conservatives” as being opposed to each other on some sort of fundamental level, beyond clashing personal ambitions.
They’re not. Most of their arguments are kayfabe for the benefit of voters, which is why it mostly doesn’t really matter which of them gets in, the agenda is broadly the same. That’s why David Cameron never got around to bonfiring the quangos, same with May and Johnson. Not because they were outsmarted by Gordon Brown, but because they agree with Gordon Brown. We’ve had a nominally “conservative” government for over a decade now, and it’s basically identical to Blair/Brown apart from the rhetoric. If Keir Starmer gets in, it’ll continue to be the same. The only one who tried to change the script in Westminster was Jeremy Corbyn, and look what happened to him.
Think of the establishment political parties as being more like the Five Families who carved up organised crime in 20th century New York. They’re squabbling over who gets to control the biggest piece of the action, they’re not trying to change the game. The game works very well for these people. It’s a magic carpet ride of comfy salaries, excellent pensions, a seat in the Lords, non-executive directorships, consultancy fees, speaking gigs, quango jobs, think tank sinecures, board memberships of “charities”… and nobody cares how much of a useless fuckup they are. Doesn’t matter. Because they’re in the club, they’ve got a golden ticket.
It’s a big club, but you and I are not in the big club. Alex Salmond is not in the club. That’s why he’s hated by these people.
It seems truly inconceivable that a completely new Party, which pretty much appeared out of the blue, can be producing reliable polling statistics after existing for less than a week.
Far more telling, is the way Scotland’s rotten Unionist media has jumped on the figure with great alacrity, and arbitrarily rubbished the figure of 3% as somehow disastrous.
See it for what it is. A contrived ‘fact’ with extremely dubious and shaky foundation, trumpeted by Unionist shills masquerading as journalists, as definitive evidence that Scottish Independence is unpopular.
Even supposing the ALBA party had been around for longer than 6 days, what objective criteria are they using to judge polling at 3% as being disastrous? If ALBA was a commercial product, 3% market share achieved just six days after launch would be considered a stratospheric initial success and marketing triumph..
But then we remember this is the “Scottish Media”, doing what the Scottish media is famous for, … undermining the cause of Scottish Independence.
As for Sturgeon, she seems truly unhinged by her bitterness and inadequacies. Alex Salmond is now being smeared as a gambler on the gee-gees. Fk sake. What’s next? Alex Salmond drives too fast in urban areas? Alex Salmond drinks too much? Alex Salmond was a gun runner and drug trafficker in his school days? Alex Salmond has halitosis and always leaves the toilet seat up? Just stop it Sturgeon. You’re just making an ever bigger arse of yourself.
Why not accuse him of something really nasty? Such as orchestrating a malicious smear campaign designed to destroy a political rival’s career and have them branded a sex offender and sent to jail? What kind of monster would that make him out to be eh?
Maybe she should rename the SNP the “l hate Alex Salmond Party”. It would certainly be more accurate than masquerading as a pro Independence Party.
But her smears won’t work. I’m still voting SNP 1 ALBA 2. That’s the optimal result for Scotland.
In a purely political sense, SNP 1&2 is like shooting Scotland in one foot because of the false belief that the other foot will be enough.
In 2016 , SNP 1&2 allowed 50 English based Unionist Party candidates to become unopposed members of the Scottish Parliament.
While Scotland’s First Minister falsely accuses ALBA of gaming the system.
Have the SNP no self-awareness these days.
.
With Wee Ginger Dug volunteering as Sturgeon’s human shield he clearly wants the Alba Party and by implication a #supermajority to FAIL.
I just spent a depressing 4 minutes on PayPalPaul’s Blog. He used to want Scotland to become independent. Now it seems to be all about sending money to Paul for this that and the other.
Vote..
SNP1
WGD2 = PayPalPaul £2
It is a funny old world when PayPalPaul turns off Scottish INDY supporters or at least sends them into narcoleptic depression.
Whereas for zany comedy relief, as the Rev calls it, I found comfort in what Margaret Thatcher and Phil Mitchell’s love-child had crayoned. Le Merde de Brian Monteith cheers Alba Party folk like me right up…
https://archive.is/qzVc5
It’s weird. Dundee Courier Editor David The Vow Clegg has a serious drug habit (maxing out on Imodium = crappy g himself about Alba) and crying on his organ’s front page that it is all over for Salmond at 3%.
Whilst Monteith is paranoid Alba gets 20 MSPs and waxes lyrical about what Alex will want from St Nicola.
Leslie Evans sent to Siberia (to match her cold heart).
Penfold Murrell to get a job at Snips Barbers as the Chief Executive Beard Trimmer.
James Wolffe to be promoted to president Putin’s Justice Tsar.
John Swinney to be promoted to senior bank teller at Blairgowrie RBS.
Linda Fabiani to be promoted to the Royal Society for Protection of Bats.
Ian Blackford to be promoted to Expense Claiming Tsar for £241,000 a year claimed in CalMac tickets. Even though there is a bridge to the Skye Pie.
Angus Robertson HM Queens New Years Honours: made into a KotSG (Keeper of the Sturgeon Daggers),
Sir Pete Wishart finally becomes a knight and gets to stay at Westminster as in the year 2036 he will be ennobled Lord Twatter of McWoke, Slipper Division. British Empire spokesperson for MP and Lords expenses.
With that load of troughers and grasping money grabbers away from Holyrood we might, just might stand a chance at becoming independent.
To maximize pro-INDY MSPs I will hold my nose with tongs ya bas and vote…
SNP 1 (puke)
Alba 2.
For the uninitiated we need the SNP to do well on the CONSTITUENCY Vote as that is the ONLY way the Alba Party can secure UNIONIST MSP SEATS. Otherwise if you vote SNP2 you are WASTING your second vote.
Arbroath1320 says:
//www.thenational.scot/news/19204502.scotlands-economy-can-thrive-independence-downing-street-adviser-admits/
//blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scottish-independence-cost/
The blogs LSE ACC UK has been taken down as it shows just how well Scotland would do as an Independent country.
I have saved it & will post here. It’s a long read, best you copy it & save it to your computer for future use.
____________________________________
26Here’s the LSE blog, without one table, which I couldn’t copy
By contrasting Scotland and England to the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic’s ‘Velvet Divorce’, Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott and Geoffrey Chapman suggest that an independent Scotland will continue growing real GDP per capita despite higher trade costs.
In light of the ongoing challenges facing the UK, the idea of Scottish independence seems unpalatable to many, but the news implies strong support. The Scottish government has recently published draft legislation for the holding of another referendum. Numerous polls suggest that a majority vote for independence would occur should this referendum go ahead. Although polls do not necessarily reflect what people will actually vote for at a particular moment in time, the political momentum for another referendum is growing. This pressure will be amplified should the SNP win a majority in the upcoming Scottish Parliamentary elections.
While this remains unclear, the Scottish Parliament may have the constitutional authority to legislate for another referendum without the involvement of the UK government and Parliament. This question can only be definitively settled with a ruling from the UK Supreme Court, one that might not come. Litigating this matter is not necessarily desirable. The courts afford deference to the Scottish Parliament, and there are reasons for being hesitant towards becoming entangled with, and potentially hindering, the legislative process of a democratically elected parliament.
If the current UK government opposes such a course of action, the ways in which the law may prevent the Scottish Parliament alone from legislating for a (non-binding) referendum will need to be clearly articulated. This would be a challenging case to make, because arguing that holding another referendum affects the UK assumes the potential result, which cannot be known in advance. The result of a referendum cannot retroactively determine the legality of holding it. And even if favouring independence, the force of such a result would be more political than legal. This is because the UK Parliament would need to become involved in order to give legal effect to that result, similar to how it was necessary in order to give legal effect to the EU referendum result.
Scotland could also attempt unilateral secession from the UK, which would arguably flout constitutional law and make the applicable international law more relevant. At present, Scotland satisfies all the international legal criteria for statehood, with one exception: it lacks the formal authority to enter into foreign relations, even though it has the literal ability to do so. Consequently, if Scotland demonstrated independence from UK authority in the course of conducting international relations, Scotland would be more likely recognised as a state by other states and international organisations. Furthermore, if voting at the UN General Assembly is anything to go by, we see no immediate reasons why other states would side with a UK position (assuming it opposed secession).
While becoming independent would have immediate economic costs, the long-term view suggests there are benefits. By contrasting Scotland and England to the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic’s ‘Velvet Divorce’, our research suggests that an independent Scotland will continue growing real GDP per capita despite higher trade costs. Following the ‘Velvet Divorce’ in 1993, the Czech and Slovak Republics faced additional border costs in their bilateral trade, not least because the Czech Republic kept the Czech Koruna, whereas the Slovak Republic adopted the Euro. By analysing the bilateral comprehensive trade costs from the ESCAP-World Bank Trade Cost Database, we note that for the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic’s trade costs have always been lower than Germany’s (which becomes the largest trading partner for both states post-independence). In 1995, trade costs between the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic were equivalent to 35%, whereas between the Czech Republic and Germany, trade costs were equivalent to 56%. The Slovak Republic presents with similar patterns in that trade costs between the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic have always been lower than trade costs between the Slovak Republic and Germany.
In the years post-independence, it is apparent that the Czech Republic substituted their exports and imports away from the Slovak Republic; the Slovak Republic did the same, substituting their exports and imports away from the Czech Republic, both in favour of Germany. Despite international trade rebalancing in favour of Germany, a trade partner with higher trade costs, real GDP per capita continued growing. It is contextually important to note that for the economically smaller state, the Slovak Republic quite quickly (over six or so years) substituted away from what was its much larger, more significant, export partner to what was a much smaller partner. That is to say, the Slovak Republic’s exports to Germany were nearly three times less than to the Czech Republic in 1993, but as of 2019, the Slovak Republic’s exports to Germany were nearly two times greater than to the Czech Republic. While the change was less significant regarding the Slovak Republic’s imports, the same shift occurred.
Extrapolating the above to England and Scotland, we look at key indicators of macroeconomic policy for Scotland (see Table 1) compared to the Czech and Slovak Republics. Where Scottish estimates could not be found or calculated, we include UK data as a proxy, included in square brackets. According to official statistics, Scotland’s current GDP increased steadily between 1998 and 2019, climbing from £85,204 million to £177,106 million (equivalent to 107.9% growth for the period, or 5% annually).
Regarding the available trade data between 2002 and 2018, Scotland’s export shares are relatively stable. In 2002, Scotland exported 23% to the EU, 18% to non-EU, and 58% to the rest of the UK. The rest of the UK’s share peaked in 2007 at 67%, when the EU received 16% and non-EU 17%. However, the rest of the UK’s share has tapered off since and as of 2018, was standing at 60% (with the EU receiving 19% and non-EU 21%). Since 2007, counterbalancing the downward trajectory of the rest of the UK’s share has been an increasing trend in Scotland’s non-EU trade, rising from 17% to 21% in 2018. Scotland’s top five international export destinations accounted for £15.1 billion of all exports in 2018, with the top five markets being the US, France, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. The US remains Scotland’s top international export destination, accounting for an estimated £5.5 billion in 2018.
Moreover, Scotland’s exports to the EU grew by an average of 4% per year over the last five years, and since 2010, growth to the EU outpaced growth to the rest of the world and the rest of the UK by a significant margin. Scotland is not only becoming more economically integrated with the EU (see here), but seemingly also with non-EU partners. Scotland’s historic economic performance has been strong, which bodes well for a small, open and independent Scotland. With modest population growth alongside good GDP growth, supported by stable participation in international trade, it seems Scotland is in a far better initial condition than either the Czech or Slovak Republics, and can therefore expect similar (if not better) post-independence outcomes.
In light of long-run economic growth and stability, it might be worthwhile for Scotland to attempt entering into foreign relations with other states and international organisations if there was no cooperation from the UK to take forward another referendum result favouring independence. A key factor is that if the UK did not respect any future referendum result favouring independence, unilateral Scottish secession would become more legitimate, meaning international recognition of Scotland as an independent state would arguably be more likely. Although the UK currently respects the right of Scots to self-determination, this would no longer be the case if the UK did not take the appropriate steps to implement a referendum result favouring independence.
With regional stability in the interests of all parties, any referendum favouring Scottish independence should be enacted through a staged approach to secession in compliance with constitutional law to minimise the economic cost on the UK and Scotland. The rule of law should be at the heart of any Scottish secession to allow for the best possible economic outcomes for people in Scotland and the UK. Such a process also depends on the politics between the UK and Scottish governments being cooperative, open-minded, and transparent. Nevertheless, although political amicability between the UK and Scotland is preferable, it is not indispensable for Scotland to become independent and continue prospering thereafter, particularly if Scotland negotiates access to the EU single market.
Considering Scotland has all the necessary machinery in place to become an independent state, we see no obvious reasons why Scotland would not succeed economically if it were to do so, especially if achieved within the bounds of the law. Although our findings might be controversial to some, we hope to show that Scottish independence, while not inevitable, is far more nuanced a matter than many have claimed. There exist several options worth pursuing for the parties to this debate.
____________________
___
Note: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, the Department for International Trade, or the UK Government.
About the Authors
Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is a Research Fellow at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
Geoffrey Chapman is an Economic Adviser at the Department for International Trade, UK Government.
From
It’s the dead of night and am up for a cup of tea. I notice on my feed that the metropolitan cognoscenti at the New statesman have an article referring to the alba party as a bekilted farragism. I can’t even be arsed registering to read it and just wondered if anyone had read/seen it or even archived it and would care to share it?
@ Frank Gillougley at 2.54
https://archive.fo/mgBzM
It’s a very unpleasant article (I stopped reading it about two thirds of the way through), by an untrustworthy author. It insults Wings, Craig Murray, and Tommy Sheridan as well as Alex Salmond, and comes across to me as embittered whingeing.
(I found the archive link as follows, for your future reference:
I went to the New Statesman website, where the article was top of the bill. I right-clicked on it, selected “copy link address”, and then pasted that into archive.fo – the page had already been archived, so I was able to past that link here, but if it hadn’t been, it would have archived for me and generated a link.)
Just watching this mouse in my kitchen. Iain macwhirter is right though , Nicola sturgeon is fucked up. Absolutely.
Cool, crazy cat. Cool.
Even if she wanted to Nicola Sturgeon can not support Alba on the list as she has a full slate of her own SNP list candidates, so do not expect any warm words from that direction
Ian Murray, she has a full slate of woke list candidates which she wants elected to further her woke ambitions. I’ve never seen a political party so quickly and so completely parasitized before.
Kiwilassie says:
2 April, 2021 at 2:39 am
Arbroath1320 says:
//blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scottish-independence-cost/
The blogs LSE ACC UK has been taken down as it shows just how well Scotland would do as an Independent country.
I read that LSE article last week.
While it’s positive on the surface, the comments about Scotland “seceding” from the UK betrays a sloppy Constitutional illiteracy which unfortunately asks questions about his expertise in other matters.
Scotland is a Nation already. It cannot “secede” from the UK because the UK is not, and never has been Scotland’s mother country, and if Scotland “seceded” from the UK, there would not be a “Continuer State UK”, because the UK would cease to exist, and it’s constituent parts would revert back to the separate sovereign Kingdoms they formerly were.
It’s not being pedantic either. A UDI and Secession are simply unconstitutional impracticalities. Scotland already exists as a Nation with its own sovereign Constitution, and no part of Scotland needs “carved from the flesh” from either mother England or mother UK.
A UDI is perhaps more complicated, depending on how you interpret it; a unilateral Declaration of Independence for a new ‘Independence’ being created, or, a unilateral Declaration of Independence which affirms a pre-existing state of Independence.
The “normal” convention of a UDI is the creation of a new State, and that conventional interpretation doesn’t fit Scotland’s circumstance. I suppose it boils down to the literal distinction between a declaration and an affirmation, but nobody knows whether a UAI, that is, Unilateral Affirmation of Independence, is really a ‘thing’.
Having said all that, the London School of Economics might be forgiven for their unconstitutional faux pas, because it frequently seems the greater part of Scotland’s populations seems hardly any better informed.
I met a member of my former branch yesterday in the street and asked him what he thought of Alba. What followed was a foul mouthed rant about Alex Salmond and a stream of the usual sound bites put out by the unionist press and sadly some SNP politicians. It was clear he had no idea what Alba was about and was just spouting the pish he was being fed. Alba would be as well packing up and going home as our old friend Rhiannon Spear has pronounced that the new party is going to crash and burn and she is always right. Aye right.
Yep Iain Mcwhirter is right. Nicola has lost it. When she says Alba are trying to trick their way to independence.
Every unionist Msp is elected to stop independence. Until we get independence they are Scotland’s enemy. Any way we can remove them is What we should all be actively doing. Once we are independent, we can talk about fairness and a balanced parliament. Once all Tories etc believe in and are part of a sovereign parliament.
Nicola seems to want to keep unionists in our parliament. That is what I call tricking SNP supporters that she is there to defeat unionism.
What an absolute failure. Playing by British rules in a devolved parliament.
She needs to be removed , before she does any more damage.
Big Jock. Hear hear.well said.
Breeks says:
2 April, 2021 at 5:04 am
Kiwilassie says:
2 April, 2021 at 2:39 am
Arbroath1320 says:
//blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scottish-independence-cost/
The blogs LSE ACC UK has been taken down as it shows just how well Scotland would do as an Independent country.
I read that LSE article last week.
Reply
I posted that just incase it was important info for Scotland.
What is in there that it has been taken down from the net?
I’m not in Scotland, I left 50 years ago, so may get some things wrong.
Crazy cat 2.54 am
Worth reading this article in the new statesman if only to see how poisonous convoluted ignorant and bigoted ‘high-end’ journalism can be. Moral: you don’t have to read the daily heil, to have your prejudices stroked. https://archive.fo/mgBzM
Written by some PhD student as if trying to impress with an essay for their higher English. There are some absolute belters within such as ‘Scottish politics is ten years behind English politics’. Etc. You’ll get the flavour. Absolute pish masquerading as sophisticated pretentious analysis.
SNP 1 (like her in the exorcist)
Alba 2 (like james McFadden’s goal against France in Paris)
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/04/02/both-votes-out-the-windae/
@Kiwilassie
Thanks for copying the whole text of the LSE doc outlining how Scotland would be economically well off and better as an Independent Country.
I’ve copied the article you re-produced in full for future reference.
Funny how the LSE Pro Independence blogs get taken down and the anti Independence ones left on and are also highlighted and published on the MSM news outlets.
We know why!!!
It’s about time the SNP felt some electoral pressure, and this is when we’ll see their true colours.
She knows she isn’t interested in independence, so it’s now Sturgeon who’s telling us to shut up and eat our cereal. The sooner she’s gone, the better.
“Once we are independent, we can talk about fairness and a balanced parliament.”
That doesn’t work.
I started reading this website just after New Year. I wanted to read Robin McAlpine’s statement re the current SNP and a relative recommended I try here.
I found it instantly and what I read shocked me. “Holyrood and the SNP are rotten, they tried to stitch-up a political opponent, they used the offices of state, you’ll never build anything on top of that.”
In the intervening period we have had the Fabiani Inquiry and the interventions of Andrew Neil and David Davis in the HoC.
What I didn’t realize from Robin McAlpine was just how complicit our lawyers were, but we all know now, don’t we.
The Fabiani Inquiry was all about whether she broke the Ministerial Code or not. Does anyone actually care about that when what we are really talking about is perjury and an attempt to jail an opponent.
Personally, I think there is more bad news to come-out about the SNP. Not as bad as the Salmond story, but still very bad.
I hope that Salmond returns to Holyrood and I hope his court action achieves him a healthy out of court settlement.
As far as an SNP majority at Holyrood is concerned, I think that would be disastrous for Scotland.
Big Jock says:
2 April, 2021 at 7:49 am
Yep Iain Mcwhirter is right. Nicola has lost it…
It is my considered opinion, Sturgeon never had it in the first place. Her leadership has been dismal from the beginning, pedestrian and inept, constitutionally illiterate, bereft of initiative, and strategically naive.
Perhaps her irrational antithesis to Alex Salmond stems from guilt, that she has done so much to wreck, stifle, and disillusion the mighty YES juggernaut, and squandered it’s soaring morale and momentum, that which Alex Salmond created.
In it’s place she offers us her Spartan menu of Wokist weirdos and grovelling subservience to Westminster rule, and a procession of conniving, brainless sycophants, lecturing the stunned troops of Independence on why they must accept giving pressure groups and deviants access to their women and children.
Independence? Scotland, dragged out of Europe with an emphatic sovereign mandate to remain, and throughout that critical 18 month period, Sturgeon’s NEC stormtroopers didn’t even discuss Scottish Independence.
Sturgeon flummoxed for 5 years on how to defeat a Section 30 veto, and just gave up. Alex Salmond clad in black, cat burgles his way into Bute House and leaves a box of chocs and an invitation to a Holyrood Supermajority on the dresser, before he dives out the window, dodges the searchlights, and disappears into the night… All because the lady loves Milk Tray…
But then of course, Sourpuss Sturgeon immediately declares her undying hatred of chocolate and doubles security… as unnoticed by everyone, the box of chocs gets quietly “redacted”…
Big Jock says:
2 April, 2021 at 7:49 am
Yep Iain Mcwhirter is right. Nicola has lost it. When she says Alba are trying to trick their way to independence.
———–
And Nicola Sturgeon is trying to trick her way OUT of a route to independence.
There is no plausible other alternative way to look at it. The job is too much hassle and the comfy salary and pension benefits are more important to her and “Herr Otto Flick Murrel.”
Fkn hell man…
Just realised that spoof of a 1970’s Milk Tray ad might have helped somebody, somewhere to finish their jigsaw and now I’ll now be going to jail….
All because the police and COPFS now think I know too much about an alleged break-in…THAT DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAPPEN!
Oh bollocks. How easily done was that?… Fk sake. A life on the run just for that?
Oh Dear. How times change. Those still advocating the “Both Votes SNP” nonsense now have a very difficult message to spread. How do you square that circle now that there is an alternative in town? How on earth is a constituency vote for the SNP and a list vote for ALBA bad if you believe in Scottish independence? You do believe in independence, don’t you? Don’t you? Hello? The only (weak) arguments in favour of “both votes SNP” are stinkers: (Salmond is the devil, We can’t cheat to get independence, People aren’t ready for it blah blah). Not the sort of thing we expect from SNP speakers.
We expect such stinking arguments from the unionist side, but surely SNP politicians would not lower themselves to spout such nonsense? Never! Surely not. Surely…………Oh Dear!
@Breeks –
Ye’d best burn that balaclava pronto!
😉
Breeks says: at 2:08 am
“It seems truly inconceivable that a completely new Party, which pretty much appeared out of the blue, can be producing reliable polling statistics after existing for less than a week.
Far more telling, is the way Scotland’s rotten Unionist media has jumped on the figure with great alacrity, and arbitrarily rubbished the figure of 3% as somehow disastrous.”
What I find even far more telling is the way many prominent “Pro-Indy” campaigners and voices are also jumping on that bandwagon of denigrating this initial polling figure, and the “gaming the vote” crap.
They are in complete denial as to the reasons why several new Pro-Indy Parties came into fruition as a direct result of the SNP and Greens pushing policy and behaving in ways that was losing Indy supporters and importantly activists who could no longer sell of defend these divisive policies whilst out campaigning.
They have had plenty of time to see this situation develop as it has been pointed out to them for years should they have had the openness of mind and political expediency to bother taking on board the thoughts and discussions on what is the most prominently read blog on Scottish politics.
But no, they just stick to punting whatever the Party line is instead.
One ponders what a new Pro-Indy party standing in the Regions would be polling at now if so many of those slating the concept had recognised the vacuum the SNP and Greens had created, which was a weakness to the progress of Indy, and they had instead embraced the value a new Party would bring in shoring up and gaining support. I thought we’d be getting a more consensual form of politics in an Indy Scotland rather than the continuing adversarial crap these “progressives” seem to be so keen on punting.
Any SNP politician spouting expressions like “cheating for independence”, “middle of pandemic” “Salmond ego trip” is far more interested in his/her personal circumstances than the great cause of Scottish Independence. FACT.
Money
Power
Status
Ruined many a good soul. 🙂
It tells us everything we need to know about the SNP and particularly the Sturgeonista Loyal faction that they absolutely lose their shit about people voting SNP 1 / Alba 2, but have no issue with the Greens standing in constituency seats?
All they are interested in is securing their comfy devolutionary sinecures for another 5 years. They won’t take the necessary steps to ensure #indyref2 happens, still less plebiscitary elections.
I see the rationale for Alex Salmond and Alba flying out of the traps with a supermajority/max the Yes strategy, but there comes a point that it may actually make sense to ensure the SNP doesn’t get too many seats, which is why it may actually make sense to target individual constituency seats for surgical removal. I’d certainly love to see Sturgeon and Swinney removed, and Robertson blocked in Edinburgh Central: I’m sure there might be a few other dyed in the wool roasters it would be good to see face their Portillo moments.
Any suggestions….?
crazycat @3:24am
Sean Bell, over at The Source is yet another hit piece, though this time he paints Alba as being to the left of the SNP. It’s funny how both authors are trying to position Alba as more extreme than the SNP. Bell goes one better and claims that Alba is a personality project – coming from an SNP apologist that’s a pretty interesting stance to take. I didn’t bother with a link. It’s really not worth your time reading it.
Iain Lawson made an interesting comment about how Alba was putting bloggers in the front row and he observed that they were the future rather than the dead-tree press. Seems that Bell and Scothorne still have delusions that they are somehow authentic, professional and here to stay, while at the same time their world is collapsing as they empty their accounts of trust and credibility.
I think Lawson is right but I am not sure how it will pan out. All the mainstream media are on life-support with ad infested sites riddled with click-bait as they try every desperate trick to hook readers for their advertisers. The mid-tier new-media hopefuls are just cheaper incarnations of their former employers. I’m not sure there’s much money there to keep them afloat either. Whether the blogs can fill the gap remains to be seen. The big hitters like the Rev. can carve out their own space and set their own terms. The question is whether it will be possible to mint mini-Revs. to cover the other areas.
@Luigi at 9.01am
Spot on with that post. Another true Independent Party surfaces with the greatest Scottish Politician of our era leading it. They went after him but couldn’t get him.
It’s a no brainier for those that want Independence to give Alba their list vote and that includes the SNP members who want the same. Those of the SNP that don’t obviously shouldn’t be in the party.
My goodness what a poisonous cat-fight Scots politics has become. An article in the Daily Record this am (‘NS will not heed As’s casefire (Sic) plea to move on’ just about takes the biscuit. AS has apparently ‘made her life hell’ since 2018 and ‘dragged her husband and chief of staff into his web by claiming they were part of a vast conspiracy….’
Utter bollocks. And you are seriously going to vote for this woman?? Good luck with that.
I’ll get me coat
A Survation opinion poll has now been released, which shows that Alba will only receive 3% in the regional list vote and probably no seats. I suspect that those seeking independence who recognise that both votes SNP is a waste of their second vote, will vote Green in this section; the poll shows that the Greens are on 11%.
Stating the Obvious
The d’Hondt’s system is designed to give small parties access to decision making, not one party elected on a low vote. Those parties are expected to work together- all well and good in self-governing nations – useless in colonised Scotland outnumbered by unionist parties.
daodao @ 9:25 am
Nice try, but please be aware – there are many, many independence voters who will never in a month of Sundays vote either SNP or Green on the list. If there is no other alternative, they just wont show at all. How does that help independence?
These good folk need somewhere to go. Whether or not ALBA win any seats.
It would appear that the enabling of men to declare themselves women, on a random and daily basis, is far more important to the SNP than campaigning to leave the UK. Can it be assumed that all SNP voters endorse such a prioritisation?
@daodao,
`will vote Green in this section;`
you are a day late,
Huntigowk Day was yesterday.
daodao, that piece of trivia has already been dealt with – seems the pollsters couldn’t wait to decry ALBA and they had the poll 3 days after the launch.
The green party used to be a temptation for those of us wishing to keep the earth healthy and safe . The fact that they now support a bill which is an anathema to me and to many others now rules them dead duck material.
“daodao,
`will vote Green in this section;`
you are a day late,”
– Dao, dao. daylight come and I want go home.
Interestingly there are 35 SNP constituency candidates who are also standing on the list. Dealing yourself an extra set of cards in order to get your snout back in the trough seems like gaming the system to me.
https://www.snp.org/the-snps-candidates-for-the-2021-scottish-parliament-election/
The Greens vote will not be 11% , that’s fantasy.
Dan @9.08 am
I completely agree Dan. It is quite sad to see such blind following.
The Unionists I can understand because they are afraid, but pro-Indy people should be delighted that we have a second party which gives a more balanced choice in Scottish politics. However, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
I also believe that Sturgeon and her sycophants are very afraid, because their malevolence is now very likely to be exposed.
Ian Brotherhood says:
“@Breeks –
Ye’d best burn that balaclava pronto!”
Yup, Breeks is going down. Yon Wings logo is a bit of a giveaway.
Meanwhile, in other news, I hear MSM journos are preparing shaky footage of Alex Salmond piloting a MiG fighter over the Forth Bridge for the Sunday papers.
It’s amazing what £3 million gets you.
When , oh when, is ANY journalist going to ask Nicola the killer question- why are you standing for a Constituency seat and a List seat? Isn’t that ‘cheating’, ‘ gaming the system’ Ms. Sturgeon?
Come on Alex Neil, BBCR4, Radio Scotland, Debate Night…. can somebody please ask.
Random thoughts from a unionist, please don’t throw rocks or kill me with hammers. Ms. Sturgeon is not a unionist. She is also not pro independence. She is solely a Sturgeonist. It therefore follows that the Scottish media is not unionist and it certainly isn’t pro independence, it is also Sturgeonist which is understandable I suppose as she has been basting them with money. We are being ‘led’ by a woman who is entirely self interested and a large chunk of the population had fallen for it. She doesn’t care about you, me, Scotland, our children and grandchildren, she cares only about herself. This has been amply demonstrated by the alleged ‘good things’ she has done, free prescriptions, baby boxes, free laptops and now free council tax for under 22s who own their own property. What is the one thing these have in common? They are of benefit to the very people who can afford them already! And they soak up enormous amounts of money which could be used for those who really need extra help.
Last night as I wasn’t asleep anyway I read the front page article in the Courier. It almost made me vomit and I have cancelled my subscription. Then I had a brief look at an article in the P&J, I could only read the first paragraph but that was so vile I had to overcome an urge to bleach my eyeballs. Mr. Salmond is no friend of mine for obvious reasons but this attacking of him has gone beyond reason and I cannot in all decency ignore it. I hope he sues the arse off all of them.
I cannot understand why any of you would vote SNP 1, or at least I understand the mechanics of SNP 1, Alba 2 but I cannot condone the SNP 1 bit. You will be voting for a cult and as far as I can see nothing and nobody will stop her. Frankly I am scared. Alba 2 -which I am even tempted by myself- only works if enough people do it. With SNP 1 there is grave danger of Sturgeon becoming even more entrenched and I don’t see a way out of that. By what mechanism will she be booted? I cannot see it. I wish I could.
@Arch Stanton 9.36am
No it can’t. The overwhelming majority of SNP voters and of the general population see TRA and the extremist fringe who push their a-scientific woo woo for the regressive anti-democratic attack on women’s rights that it undoubtedly is. The polling evidence – including Rev Stu’s – shows this beyond all doubt.
The problem for the Yes movement is that the lunatic fringe of men’s rights activists and sophomoric trans rights extremists have parasitised the leadership of the SNP as well as the Scottish Greens. Plaid Cymru have also succumbed to the “TWAW” mantra as absolute truth. Any non-believers are othered, monstered and either expelled or forced into grovelling apologies after suitably orchestrated show trials and self-criticism as Andy Wightman discovered.
It’s interesting that the MSM has largely avoided the issue, particularly as it would be an ideal weapon to attack both the SNP and broader movement with. One might almost think they had an agenda, like ensuring Sturgeon remained in power?
Naturally there have been a few brave souls that have stuck their heads above the parapet like Mandy Rhodes, Iain MacWhirter and Paul McKenna, but they’re very much the exceptions that prove the rule. Of course for some in the MSM it’s self preservation, and not wanting to be subject to the same levels of abuse as Joanna Cherry et al, but for others it’s because they’re true believers in the TWAW mantra too.
Whether the issue gains much traction in the campaign remains to be seen. Those active in political campaigns, party members and activists, even those of us more active in cyber-politics may not be that representative, but it seems unlikely that “ordinary” voters will be behind the TRA agenda when it is laid out in all it’s awful majesty. If it does, it may still not swing enough votes, but as it’s a fight that never needed to be had, you still have to wonder why Sturgeon and her acolytes chose this hill and this particular wedge issue to die on?
I think the ALBA list vote is an incredibly powerful message. It’s a strong seller, but it needs more exposure. A wee bit of me is concerned that there may not be enough time now to get the message out to the vast majority of the electorate. The current lockdown restrictions in addition to the all-out attack from the MSM (aided unfortunately by a few SNP politicians). In a way these all out attacks are at least giving ALBA more exposure to the general public, who now will, hopefully at least be asking questions.
The deliberate shunning of ALBA for the TV debates and the over-promotion of one, early opinion poll indicate that the unionists are desperate. All resources are now being fully deployed. The message is powerful enough to counteract this, if given time. Is there enough time?
We will know soon enough, I suppose.
Breeks @ 8.47
Bliddy brilliant.
The Britnats MUST stop the supermajority.
There’s not a lot left in the cupboard at this late stage. One thing there is that might work, is to get Nicla to scupper her own Constituency candidates chances.
It looks as if her campaign Billboard poster was produced before Alex went public with Alba – its message is actually very good for Indy (it is carrot season after all).
That leaves her to make – and she won’t be stuck for media oxygen – to make negative comments that specifically target Yes/SNP voters.
Play a wee game this week, every time she says something and it jars – ask yourself who is the target audience that was aimed for?
Slagging off Alex does not target No voters – they never liked him.
And it does not alert anyone in the Maybe Yes camp to the dangers Scotland is currently facing with Brexit / Covid recession coming down the tracks at us, and Devo Nowt a racing certainty.
But it does dispirit Yes/SNP voters – and they will be less likely to vote at all.
Couple that with tactical voting by the Unionists and the SNP sweeping the board on the Constituency vote is now looking very ropey.
Niclas comment yesterday about a Supermajority for Indy ‘cheating’ the system – as well as being wrong – was a damage limitation statement for the Unionists should we win. She’s definitely not working for us.
Meanwhile – all those campaign pictures of her – she is always alone. Its beginning to look less ‘strong’ and more just plain loner.
Any Campaign poster with Alex in it should include lots of members of the team.
I appreciate I’ve pointed out the above before folks, but when you KNOW it, you can act to null and void it. We will need to campaign, in addition to vote for, the good SNP Constituency candidates. Or Max the Yes will fail.
Arch Stanton says:9:36 am
‘It would appear that the enabling of men to declare themselves women, on a random and daily basis, is far more important to the SNP than campaigning to leave the UK. Can it be assumed that all SNP voters endorse such a prioritisation?’
Ai!
Nikky’s wee bit tranny cult is whit wiv a bin waitin for, wi oor wee kilties, for jist ceenturies up here in Kaledonia.
We ur awl John Timpsons barns, eftur awl.
I bid you ock ai the noo.
Regarding the Survation poll data, many thanks to Briandoonthetoon for linking to it:
https://cdn.survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/30085827/Survation-DC-Thomson-Scotland-Survey-Tables-21.xlsx
I recommend downloading it for a read – it’s pretty fascinating in places.
Iain Lawson was showing his own kneejerk prejudices two days ago about “nobuddy reads the Telegraph up here, it’s just posh people in En-gur-land ‘un stuff”. Not very edifying.
Had he a look at the Survation sample of its readers (and remember they are taken to be a representative snapshot of the electorate), he’d have noticed the Telegraph is fast catching up and about to overtake the failing Herald (just as I warned them two years back) and is considerably ahead of the Courier, Press & Journal, Daily Express and Sunday Post.
Of the 199 readers of the Telegraph who took part in the Survation survey, 48 were SNP votes, 43 Tories, 21 Labour and 19 LD (with one being “Other”).
Bartleby64
You are welcome on this site because you take time to explain your point. Most people here will respect and take time to engage with a person who has a cogent view.
We don’t tend to encourage time wasters and ‘lost causers’.
I agree with your notion of the press being Sturgeonista- after all she has given them a financial bung and it is hard to be a Scottish onionist paper when you are trying to promote Boris.
Your view of Sturgeon matches mine and yet 5 years ago I was convinced that we woul Dec not Brexit, and she would lead us to Indy- wrong!
The only way she will be removed is if Alex’s legal suit of Lesley Evans is successful and exposes Sturgeon’s scheming and Murrell’s part in this tragedy.
The damage she has done will go down in history but she believes she is untouchable and certainly is not being held to account.
Ruth Davidson in the H o Lords is a hugely dangerous development for Indy and Nicola treats it like a joke.
I am really not sure that I can vote SNP 1 but I have 5 weeks to get used to the idea and a day is a long time in Scottish Politics just now- plus, if Ian McWhirter has seen through her then the clock is ticking.
An opinion poll conducted a couple of days after Alba’s launch can hardly be a reliable indicator. Certainly no indicator of the new party’s potential with 5 weeks of campaigning ahead.
The 3% must vary across Scotland’s electoral regions. Alba is likely to be polling a bit better than 3% in Glasgow, Mid Scotland & Fife and the North-East. In other words, already very near to winning seats.
Scottish MSM on full Salmond/Alba finished, no seats predicted by Starvation Poll etc etc.
Fight’s now full in swing. Alba/Salmond have them rattled.
Scotland signed up to a union but got colonialism instead.
Until a people really begin to understand what national independence is (it is decolonisation), they will continue to be easily mystified and diverted by a range of other interest groups and agendas. This is what has happened to the SNP.
Fortunately Alba’s leadership get the picture.
Regarding the Macwhirter tweet.
This is not the first time Sturgeon has thrown the entire independence movement off a cliff in a vain attempt to destroy one single person.
The first time Sturgeon called in a totally unnecessary nuclear airstrike on her own position (i.e. the Independence movement) by initiating the stitch-up of Alex Salmond, just to stop him re-entering politics (and doing a much better job of getting independence than her!!, while not misplaying the BREXIT opportunity!!! a triple f**king whammy).
And now yet again this latest horrendous and very predictable wrong-turn is clearly yet again revealing to us that this is always all about what is best for Sturgeon and Murrell and damn the collateral cost to the independence movement.
This latest move is just what Sturgeon wants, to continue her massively self-(and independence movement)-destructive ‘war’ on Salmond, to do what is best for her personally, and f**k everything she was elected to stand for as SNP leader. It is not even hidden anymore.
Disappointed but not in the least bit surprised.
Luigi @ 9.55am
You said exactly what I was thinking.
The Unionist media, aided and abetted by Sturgeon and the clique, will do everyting they can to stop Eck appearing on TV debates, because they utterly fear him.
They will leave no stone unturned to try to side-line and play down ALBA and that party’s effect on Scottish politics.
However, I fear, in trying to counter the ALBA threat to the SNP’s ownership of the Independence argument, Sturgeon can open the door to the Unionists.
She will kill the SNP, if not stopped. However, she cannot kill Independence, as a better politician than her said: “The dream will never die.”
Mark Boyle
Out of the list of papers you gave, the Telegraph is likely catching up not because the readers are swinging firmly in favour of the union but because it’s the only one that is still readable.
Most of the papers on the list have single digit percentages as far as the readership of those surveyed. 30% or 40% (depending on how you treat other/none) of those surveyed don’t read any of the papers listed.
The spreadsheet is interesting, thanks for posting the link again.
Mac @10:40
Good post. Yes, the trouble is the finest, cleverest indy luminary (Salmond) and the most ruthless, most self-seeking indy luminary (Sturgeon) have been contemporaries.
@Alf Baird
Scotland didn’t sign up to anything!
1% of the population had the vote.
The wealthy elite were bought with English Gold.
The people had no say.
@Meg merrilees – “The only way she will be removed is if Alex’s legal suit of Lesley Evans is successful and exposes Sturgeon’s scheming and Murrell’s part in this tragedy.”
I read somewhere that this case is almost a nap to be settled out of court. If it is not settled out of court then I think you are right, the whole house of cards falls down instantly.
On an earlier thread, someone (Limey?) wrote that 17,000 votes for Alba would be enough to see Ross Greer being hoofed.
Can anyone please put some meat on that bone?
Blether about %s is all well and good but a lot of folk find it much easier to visualise solid targets in terms of real numbers.
If the tipping-point is at or around 6%, how does that translate into the total number of Alba voters required?
A the new mantra 3% if that’s their biggest stick they really are in trouble.
Supposedly independence supporters throwing more shite at ALBA than unionists are , get a bloody grip folks, The devil incarnate Alex Salmond has said time and time again vote SNP he’s giving princess Nicola a hand he’s helping her .
For princess Nicola to say ALBA will cost list votes is beyond stupid , the best part of a million votes cast for the SNP result 4 seats it can’t get much worse can it , this way there’s a chance of capturing at least some more .
Aye but it’s only 3% , 3% just in case you missed it after a few days it’s only 3% a definite failure Alex is the problem you lot are killing indyref2 it’s all Campbell’s fault between the two of them Salmond and Campbell they are the problem,
Sorry Nicola fans point to one thing Nicola has done to further independence , unless you are totally dumb and stupid and clinging to a mirage that doesn’t exist we have not just stood still we have went backwards right now we are in a worse position than we were in 2015 .
The Million is a rough figure don’t quote that as exact it’s just for example.
Ian Brotherhood @10:56
“…..enough to see Ross Greer being hoofed.”
Hope he get’s hoofed. He’s already hooved. The red devil.
Good morning Andy Ellis@ 09.55 – fit like min?
I’ll take that as a No then?
As you know I’m not of a nationalist persuasion, but, as you rightly say, this does seem to be a particularly inglorious, not to mention extremely peculiar, act of electoral suicide on the part of Sturgeon et al.
Many other readers have said this before and I agree: Nicola Sturgeon and minions do not want independence, they enjoy being tin pot dictators in a devo administration.
@Daisy Walker 9.59am
The Britnats don’t have anything to fear from a supermajority though, unless it is used by the parties that make it up to force the pace. Realistically the only way that’s going to happen is if those parties threaten to or actually use the supermajority to provoke “new” Holyrood elections before 2026. (I’m discounting the idea that an SNP administration would resign to provoke such elections on the grounds that turkeys don’t vote for Xmas!).
Attractive as the prospect of threatening early elections if Britnats refuse to compromise on #indyref2 sounds, it also presupposes the SNP co-operating with Alba and other parties making up any super majority.
It’d be good to think SNP members would force Sturgeon’s hand in that scenario, or even better if they ditch her altogether, but ah hae ma doots! 🙂
There is a terrible fear of rice bowls being broken.
I’m sure that at least one of these organisations will provivide care and shelter
Harvie is bisexual, and in 2003 became the first openly bisexual Member of the Scottish Parliament.[10] He is an advocate of Open Source and Free Software, and a Linux user. His use of Twitter during an important political dinner drew much media comment.[11]
Harvie is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society,[12] Honorary Vice-President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association and a patron of Parents Enquiry Scotland. He is a board member of the Glasgay! Festival, and a member of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Equality Network, Stonewall (UK), Amnesty International, Humanist Society Scotland, Campaign for Real Ale and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. From 2003 until 2007, Harvie wrote a weekly column in the Scottish edition of the Big Issue.
Harvie was a candidate in the election for Rector of the University of Glasgow in February 2008.[13]
You won’t get much sense on a strongly pro indy blog. You have to put yourself in the shoes of others.
Having policies is divisive so is calling People conspiracy theorists. Unless your message is totally focused on independence you will not get anywhere.
I am not voting for returning to the EU or for people who are bullshitting me about attracting inward investment.
Tell me how you will gain independence and demonstrate that you can fix our broken country. Scotland has too many social problems and no real democracy.
@Arch 11.03am
Aw, chavin awa’ like. Foos yer doos?
Yes, you can take it as a no, though I’m not an SNP member or supporter (any more!).
As for your sad attachment to British nationalism, sadly the light to some is an unwelcome friend.
John Martini says:
2 April, 2021 at 11:17 am
You won’t get much sense on a strongly pro indy blog. You have to put yourself in the shoes of others.
I would differ, there is a lot of sense ABL and BTL to be found.
I am not voting for returning to the EU or for people who are bullshitting me about attracting inward investment.
Just as well, as that is not on any manifesto I have seen.
Meg merrilees, thank you for your thoughtful reply, much appreciated.
Now is not the time!
Once in a generation!
There is no majority for independence!
Claiming there is a majority for independence is cheating.
Silly moo!
One of the many very clever things about this ALBA plan of a supermajority is that it places the decision on the independence supporting voters and not on the SNP leadership.
At the same time it puts the ball back into the SNP’s court and shines the spotlight on their reaction.
If Sturgeon keeps this shocking display up and carries on being such an obvious impediment to what is so obviously a very good idea for the independence movement as a whole, then it will start to backfire against her and lead to more voting ALBA2 and not less.
If Sturgeon is not working for someone else, then for a leader of a political party and FM with only one overarching goal to achieve, independence, she is the wort strategic thinker I have ever seen in a my life.
It is like everything Sturgeon does is the worst thing for the very thing that she is supposed to want most. Just about every single step of the way this last 7 years. Uncanny.
If Salmond had stayed in the job in 2014, none of this insanity would have happened, and there is a very good chance we already would be independent, years ago possibly.
John Martini says:
2 April, 2021 at 11:17 am
Tell me how you will gain independence and demonstrate that you can fix our broken country.
—————————————————————
Maybe a good start would be to break free from the country that broke it
Andy@11.19
Far ye fae min?
“British nationalism”
I’ve lived in France for most of the past eight years??
Mac says
“If Salmond had stayed in the job in 2014, none of this insanity would have happened, and there is a very good chance we already would be independent, years ago possibly.“
A lot of truth in that. Pity he resigned but with a lifetime goal not achieved I suppose he was under pressure to let go and let his mentee Sturgeon take over. Unfortunately she wasn’t as astute or bullnosed enough to push the agenda for Independence which she should have done within months of the Brexit vote fiasco.
“A Survation opinion poll has now been released, which shows that Alba will only receive 3% in the regional list vote and probably no seats.”
I would suggest that most new parties that have been around for only a week probably wouldn’t garner a tenth of a percent. It’s obviously ‘the media plan’ to talk down Alba’s chances.
Once the woo-woo stuff gets to the electorate’s more general notice, a bit nearer the vote, let’s see how that 3% looks then…
Mac says:
2 April, 2021 at 11:25 am
One of the many very clever things about this ALBA plan of a supermajority is that it places the decision on the independence supporting voters and not on the SNP leadership.
At the same time it puts the ball back into the SNP’s court and shines the spotlight on their reaction.
If Sturgeon keeps this shocking display up …
If Sturgeon is not working for someone else, then for a leader of a political party and FM with only one overarching goal to achieve, independence, she is the wort strategic thinker I have ever seen in a my life.
It is like everything Sturgeon does is the worst thing for the very thing that she is supposed to want most. Just about every single step of the way this last 7 years. Uncanny.
Uncanny but accurate
kapelmeister 10:48am
Yep it is like we are playing Lionel Messi up front alongside some short sighted, two left footed, midget who keeps knocking them in our own goal for some inexplicable reason and hacking down our players, a sort of Bizzaro-Messi.
Capella your daily updates about how badly Alex and ALBA are doing cheered on by the rest of the doggers is wearing pretty thin is that all you have to keep you lot happy ?
I know you and your fellow doggers read what’s going on here because let’s face it it’s pretty boring over in the Village of the dammed with just Snide comments about ALEX and ALBA to keep you amused , it’s 3% in case you lot have forgotten it aye 3% , got that 3% .
And once more for the hard of hearing it’s 3% go on knock yerself out on that bit of comfort 3% .
@FishyWullie
It was sturgeon that broke it
@paul
Nobody else has seen your manifesto either. We are judging by the comments of your candidates.
At the moment you might as well be the invisible man, who thought it was a good idea to let salmond run? A new series of allegations are ibevitable.
The rough and ready definition of a mallicious prosecution is one which the COPFS has been advised that it has little chance of success but proceeds with the prosecution anyway.
The Administrators of Rangers Football Club lodged a mallicious prosecution claim against the COPFS for that reason and they were successful.
Could this be what Alex Salmond has in mind? Evidence that one of the prosecutions was unlikely to succeed has already been aired in public after all.
Sounds like a bit of a slam-dunk to me, but I’m not a lawyer.
Dont listen to the unionist press ALBA will take seats there just pushing their tails and lies.
Capt.Yossarian
Yes, I have my doubts that AS and Lesley Evans will see the inside of a court house. The SNP will throw as much money as possible, maybe even the Entire Bank of England ( not that it is worth much just now) at AS to make sure everything stays secret, after all , if NS lets down Lesley Evans now then she will surely spill the beans if ‘dumped’.
Money can buy just about everything but it will never bring peace of mind.
I will be interested to hear AS’s update on the membership figures for ALBA today. He thought they would be on target to exceed the membership of the Scottish Lib Dems by the end of today.
Weren’t they polling at 11% on that rigged poll?
Paul and Mac, uncanny is the word though I see an explanation. Imagine you are NS. You have clambered up the greasy pole to the top of the SNP. It’s nice up there, there’s lots of money, adoring acolytes and about 30% of Scots think you are the second coming of the Lord. Then you have a horrible thought “What happens next?” and the blinding realisation that you are not actually capable of leading Scotland to the future for which independence supporters hope and dream. So what do you do? You use every means at your disposal to stay up there. You lie, cheat, manipulate etc because if you don’t you will have to find a way to get independence AND MAKE IT WORK. You make enemies of your friends, you alienate a big chunk of your supporters but none of that matters because you are still there, at the top of the pole and nobody can shift you.
The question I would ask her is a simple one; is it worth it?
I’ve noticed recently a few posters coming on here namely Arch Stanton & John Martini demanding someone explain to them why Scotland should be a normal independent country like every other country in the world, without either of them explaining why they think being a colony of England is preferable & worth the price of our sovereignty and self respect.
So lets hear it guys explain to us why as a nation Scotland should allow another nation to run it’s affairs ?
peterabell.scot quoting The National
‘The leader of the Alba Party said if there is an independence supermajority in Holyrood after the May election, the parliament should instruct the Scottish Government to start negotiations with Westminster.
During those talks, the UK Government may require a referendum or consultation to ensure independence was the will of the Scottish people.’
Note: ‘require’ – the mixture as before. Why leave the SNP and join Alba?
‘I’m a simple Highland lairdie, so hear my lairdie’s prayer …’ The Laird’s Prayer
Susanxxx
I agree to a certain extent but other things suggest to me there are outside influences at play. For instance, the sinister way Sturgeon has gone after Salmond and through Wolffe his high profile supporters.
The timing of the verdict on Craig Murray and the soft approach by both enquiries into Sturgeon’s conduct and their reluctance to push the SG into releasing vital evidence. And her enthusiasm in introducing unpopular polices all of which have devided the membership.
But more importantly Sturgeon’s determination to avoid a referendum and thus independence has been done with a confidence knowing she is untouchable. Who is supporting her behind the scences?
All of the above negatives have taken place at a time when the polls were showing positive results that a referendum would deliver independence.
Who above all is violently opposed to Scotland leaving the union and would do anything to prevent it.
Westminster.
M
John Martini says:
2 April, 2021 at 11:40 am
@paul
Nobody else has seen your manifesto either. We are judging by the comments of your candidates.
As a voter,I do not have, or require a manifesto, I only want a choice.
At the moment you might as well be the invisible man, who thought it was a good idea to let salmond run?
A surprising amount, many in the SNP.
A new series of allegations are ibevitable.
But not even spellable
Ref Alba @ 3%
Appartfrom the obvious, party only came to life when poll was being done etc
As an ex member of my local SNP branch, I still have many of the other members on FB & it’s clear there are a good amount of them either Alba memebers or they are clearly supporting #BothvotesYES aka. SNP 1 / Alba 2
I’m in the nose holding SNP 1 group, infact like others here will really struggle to VOTE for the current version of SNP However working the maths & studying the 2011&2016 results it’s sadly only going to work if we vote SNP1 ie If SNP do not get the constituency Vote , they then push ALBA further away from a possible seat on the list. It also means a probable Yoon Party in constituency & possible 2 SNP or more on list. Obvious this is assuming the SNP vote is close to Polling figures.
Collapse of SNP vote to below 40% on constituency would be a disaster all round.
Feeling forced to vote SNP1 , jeez after a lifetime of supporting SNP.
What’s thon song “I’m as sick as f##k !
Capt Yossarian @ 10.55
Has it been confirmed what the nature of Alex Salmond’s legal action is? If it is an allegation of malfeasance in a public office by Leslie Evans, she would have to agree that she did act wrongly for there to be a settlement wouldn’t she? I can’t see her doing that.
If she did make such an admission it would be devastating not just for her (as a Civil Servant) but also for her boss – NS.
But who knows. That may be a better outcome for them both than having all the facts be put in the public domain with a court hearing not hindered by orders of secrecy.
Either way I think and hope they have both had it for what they did. I think a lot of the behaviour of NS recently is motivated by the fact that she knows, one way or another, this legal action will see her off, so she is trying to get as many nasty points i as possible whilst she can.
The legal process will come too late to impact on the present situation but it will irritate NS like mad until it finally achieves its result, forces her out, and signals the start of the real fight for independence.
PS Breeks: I can’t get rid of the mental image of Alex Salmond clad in black diving out of a window. Made my day.
Bartleby64 says:
2 April, 2021 at 11:46 am
Paul and Mac, uncanny is the word though I see an explanation. Imagine you are NS. ….
The question I would ask her is a simple one; is it worth it?
I do believe she thinks it is.
@Meg Merrilees – If Alex brings a malicious prosecution case against the COPFS and wins, then the COPFS pay the damages out of their own budget. They’ve lost and are fighting so many malicious prosecution claims at the moment that they will not be able to cover the costs within their budget. In that case, the Scottish Government steps-in and pays with public funds.
Good luck to Alex Salmond but, either way, he wins and all the rest of us lose. The only way we win, is if it reaches court and unredacted documents are disclosed. Unlikely if you ask me.
TheSNPLeftMe @ 10:51 am
“Scotland didn’t sign up to anything!”
OK, 1707 was then, now is now, although since 1707 no further international treaties have been signed specifically or only on behalf of the Scottish people, not least the recent UK Brexit treaty. At least pre 1707 Scotland’s treaties were a matter for Scots, albeit the laird class. Now we are led by the bourgeoisie who are no less barbarous, according to Cesaire etc.
The main point surely is that Scots even today are still very much led to believe that Scotland is a part of a ‘union’ alliance between sovereign countries whereas in reality what we are subject to is colonialism. This reality is, at root, the real motivation for national independence of any people.
@John Martini 11.17am
If that is so, what are you hoping to achieve posting in the world’s most popular pro-indy blog pray tell? You could always look for sense in the pro British nationalist blogs? Good luck with that by the way. Effie Deans and her ilk really are the zoomer’s friend.
I’m not sure being mono maniacs about independence is the only route to achieving it. The pro-independence support at the start of the #indyref1 campaign was about 28% from memory and reached 45% by 2014. It’s not exactly risen much in the past 6 years, which might support your thesis, but there are other factors in play I’d suggest.
The SNP have dined out for years – and held power for 14 – on the back of being seen to be competent administrators and not scaring the “soft No” vote, which was happy to vote in SNP governments even if they didn’t support independence (or at least weren’t convinced by the arguments even if they found the concept appealing in the abstract).
As for not voting because the SNP (or broader YEs support) is pro-EU that seems rather odd. The facts on the ground now are that if we become independent we would have to re-apply. We can of course argue the toss about how easy that would be, how long it would take, what the terms of entry would be, and how keen the EU would be to have us “back”, but we don’t know how the Scots people will vote on the EU until independence happens. They may still be overwhelmingly in favour, but they may decide EEA membership is fine, or want a Norway deal, or something different.
Animus against the EU seems a strange rationale to write off independence: it’s akin to taking your ball home when you’re getting beat in a match.
As for your “show me the evidence” schtick, we’ve been seeing this more and more recently from a few posters who insist they are persuadable, but then turn out to be anything but, and happily regurgitate the Project Fear play book more or less whole.You are of course correct: Scotland has many social problems and a flawed democracy. All of those occurred as part of a 300 year union, which patently isn’t delivering. You may of course point to failures on the part of the devolved government, but taken in the round that looks increasingly like the political pulling the wings off a butterfly then laughing at its inability to fly.
This site is hardly short of people pointing out how we can become independent, and arguing that the risks of doing so are outweighed in our view by the risks of staying in the union. You’re perfectly entitled to disagree with their cost/benefit analysis of course: you’re not entitled however to claim (as many of these recent “persuadables” do) that there are no arguments in favour, and questions haven’t been answered just because you don’t like the responses which have been given.
The case for and arguments in favour of the union are no more convincing – and arguably much less convincing particularly since brexit – than those in favour of independence. Neither is without risk, neither has any guarantees. Any individual who says the won’t vote for indy unless “x” happens (whether it’s a guarantee they’ll be better off, or that we won’t join the EU, or will keep the Queen as head of state) shouldn’t really be taken too seriously.
Being persuadable means that you have to be open to reason. Most current independence supporters have switched sides at some point in the past decade or so. Let’s hope more follow….
Just a couple of remarks on the issue of Alba polling 3%.
I have to say this pessimistic figure is really borne out by talking to people about the election. The demagogic grip of Sturgeon on Scotland is real. Ironically, while the unionists are wrong about the value of the union, they have got this part 100% correct. (It usually is the case in politics that the other side has at least one valid point.)
When we lost in 2014, SNP rule became, for most centre-left Scots a form of ersatz independence. Salmond, in challenging firstly the figurehead of our ersatz independence and secondly the institution of it (ie., the SNP) has made himself a popular hate figure.
What you might call the real independence movement, which is now either in or supports ALBA, has gotten offside of the much larger independence movement for whom devolution under the permanent government of a largely self-serving managerial class, plus slogans about a referendum are the real meaning of “independence.”
It will take a few more years for things to shake out and for the masses to realize that the ALBA vanguard were right.
https://tinyurl.com/5bmpa39u
https://tinyurl.com/2afk6cjz
🙂
@kapelmeister 2 April, 2021 at 11:00 am
“…..enough to see Ross Greer being hoofed.”
“Hope he get’s hoofed. He’s already hooved. The red devil”
Ross is extra speshul, its not everyone who ends up in a job that pays £65K plus expenses for coming 5th place. “Greer stood as the Scottish Green candidate in the East Dunbartonshire constituency in the 2015 general election, securing 5th place with 804 votes (1.5%). Greer began a course of study at the University of Strathclyde, in psychology and politics, but left without graduating ” Ross being in that job is simply a failing of the Scottish voting system it doesn’t deliver the best qualified people to be in government or even the most representitive of his areas Vote.
Tackety Beets @ 11:48 am
“Ref Alba @ 3%”
If that’s 3% in a week….
Growth of 3% per week, and with a further 4 weeks to go, implies ALBA could be looking at 15% by May 6. Compound growth is another aspect. Someone could check this, but that level of support might be sufficient to yield perhaps as much as 3 seats in each List region, which I expect is the target.
@fishywullie
Nobody is demanding anything. They are wondering why you are pitching independence in a trans national globalised world.
France going to war with turkey is quite a concern. The end of the EU due to french nationalism is a concern.
The coming plutocratic world rule is not something you can tain independence from.
@ Ian Brotherhood says:
2 April, 2021 at 10:56 am
On an earlier thread, someone (Limey?) wrote that 17,000 votes for Alba would be enough to see Ross Greer being hoofed.
Can anyone please put some meat on that bone?
Blether about %s is all well and good but a lot of folk find it much easier to visualise solid targets in terms of real numbers.
If the tipping-point is at or around 6%, how does that translate into the total number of Alba voters required?’
Hello Ian, I think I demonstrated the other day, that I am really bad at calculating anything dehont.
However, Ian Lawson produced the figures for the 2016 list vote and I averaged them out for all 8 regions. Just to try and understand things a bit easier.
Across the 8 regions the SNP did exceptionally well and averaged 120,000 – it really did not vary much in any area – which should worry the Onions. 41% overall vote.
Runner up – again fairly consistent – only difference being in some areas the winner was Labour, and others Tories… came in with an average of
72,000 22% overall vote
Next in line: 48,000 votes – 19%
I never really did the Greens, but overall they took 6.6% of the list vote.
Depending on which approximate numbers you use – in order to start doing better than the Greens and pick up seats your looking to get over 17,000 votes in each collective region ie Mid Scotland, etc.
Strictly speaking I think Alba needs to be picking up as much of the wasted SNP list seat votes as possible.
If they can get 15% of that Indy vote (and I think they can) then they’re putting bahookies on seats, and bonafide Indy voices in Holyrood.
Very interesting to hear Alex speak yesterday about the fisherfolk on the coasts – ‘many of whom voted for Brexit and now feel deeply betrayed’ *** words to that affect. He’s been speaking to them.
I’ve said before, it jarred in 2014 that our farming folk and fishers were not 99.9% for their ain country.
It really is now or never, backs to the wall time. For all of us. Rumour has it that’s when we’re at our finest. We’ll find out.
re: rory scothorne in the new stateman
– he’s an idiot; a wee boy trying to use big words to look important.
e.g. a stupid article in bella
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/07/14/magical-thinking/
and here he is getting his arsed handed to him in his own comments
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/07/14/magical-thinking/#comment-500653
“On an earlier thread, someone (Limey?) wrote that 17,000 votes for Alba would be enough to see Ross Greer being hoofed.
Can anyone please put some meat on that bone?”
Greer only just barely scraped into the last list seat in West Scotland, so almost any significant disruptive force would likely boot him out.
@ Johnny Martini, re ‘Nobody is demanding anything. They are wondering why you are ‘pitching independence in a trans national globalised world.’
France going to war with turkey is quite a concern. The end of the EU due to french nationalism is a concern.
‘The coming plutocratic world rule is not something you can obtain independence from.’
Ummm, sorry, who speaks like that? ‘Who are you voting for?’, ‘oh I don’t know, I was going to vote as I usually do, but the coming plutocratic world rule has changed my mind!!!!’ Away you go.
Oh I know, the ‘I dinna like that Alec Salmond’ script has been worn out recently and is no longer working.
Also, does anyone else think that all the noise from the nay-sayers about a six day old party gaining 3% in an opinion poll that could only have asked the question for one of the 2 weeks it was operating, is actually protesting a bit too much.
3% in 6 days is bloody terrific.
@Arch
I’m not sure being domiciled in France precludes one from being a British nationalist?
I lived in Sussex for 25 years: I was still a supporter of Scottish nationalism.
The AS case may rest on the leak of information to the Daily Record rather than anything else that I can see as being misfeasance. Unless the withholding of documentation counts.
In the Whitehouse (Rangers) case, there was no evidential basis for a prosecution and civil damages were settled. But Mr Whitehouse is doing us all a favour by taking it further and looking at a criminal prosecution of those involved. It could have big implications.
What we really need is a deep-clean of the Scottish establishment and a restoration of the rule of law. In my view this must happen BEFORE independence but I may a lone voice on this site.
These are not isolated cases but indicative of systemic failings in the culture of governance. Corruption is now so embedded that innocent victims give-up before they start because they know the system is loaded against them.
https://www.tns2019.org/new-blog-1/2021/4/2/crime-does-not-pay
@Andy Ellis
I lived in france. Never been so glad to be scotTish. The french are ths most racist selfish people in europe.
“Why leave the SNP and join Alba?”
I guess you mean “leave” Sturgeon’s SNP, because the SNP itself left on 14 November 2014. I think the answer to your question is in the quote you mention:
1. Alba recognises a supermajority pro-indy as a mandate to initiate negotiations to end the union. It therefore recognises Scotland’s popular sovereignty and Scotland’s legitimate rigth to self-determination. Sturgeon’s SNP does not recognise/acknowledge either. Sturgeon’s SNP are determined that their only acceptable route to gain mandate to initiate negotiations is a referendum, for which they already have one if not several democratic mandates but which they have already ensured will never happen by handing a veto to Westminster in the form of an S30. In this point alone you can see that Alba seeks to deliver independence by democratic means and by exercising Scotland’s legitimate right to self determination. Sturgeon’s SNP seeks to stop independence by ignoring and undermining democracy and self determination. The difference is stark.
2. Note that the quote says “the UK government may require”. It does not say “Scotland will require or may require”. Why is this significant? It is significant because it will no longer be Scotland begging for a referendum as Sturgeon forced us to believe it should be the case for the last 5 years. It will be the UK gov demanding a referendum from Scotland and therefore having to facilitate the things for one to actually take place. That is another huge difference, don’t you agree?
But will they facilitate that referendum? you may ask. When presented with the only other alternative, which is Scotland ending the union unilaterally, of course they will. Why? Because an indyref will offer them in such circumstances the only opportunity the British state has left to attempt to influence public opinion. This is therefore another huge difference. Sturgeon has handed a veto to Westminster and has had us begging for an indyref for 5 years. Salmond will have Westminster persuading us to have one and it will be Scotland who will have the veto.
If it is the Uk that demands a referendum and not Scotland, Scotland will be immediately in a position of control by demanding in turn the conditions of that referendum to be fair or threaten to not recognise the result.
Scotland at that point may well demand the presence of international observers to stop the UK gov, with an undisputable vested interest in the preservation of the union and who has misinterpreted an international treaty of union between 2 sovereign states as a green line for England to colonise Scotland, abusing its power to tamper with the process.
The UK government together with the Uk parliament, Supreme UK court and any other organ of the UK state have direct vested interests in the preservation of the union because their own existence depends on it, that stands to the obvious. What we are facing here is not a secession like Catalonia. What we are facing is the termination of an international treaty between two former independent, sovereign states, albeit that treaty has been used as an excuse by our partner to exploit Scotland as a colony for its own benefit.
What this means in practice is that none of those UK structures is impartial and therefore none of them can credibly arbitrate such referendum nor impose the conditions of such referendum pretending to be impartial. For that referendum to be seen as fair and to be recognised by those parties, it can only be international, impartial observers at the counting tables and the conditions of that referendum will have to be mutually agreed by both parties. Because it is not just a matter for the UK gov to recognise the result. Scotland has to recognise the result as well because it it does not and if it sees in any way that the Uk gov may have gerrymandered the process in any way, the result will not be recognised and we will have 2014 all over again.
Do you start to see why for a real pro independence voter and activist ALBA is far more attractive than Sturgeon’s pretend SNP?
There was a question – I think Peter A Bell raised it – what good will Alba be if the SNP don’t agree with them? Words to that affect.
And I thought about answering it tactically, re Scottish Sovereignty being represented at Holyrood by more than one party, and the power to hold a new HE election, and if the SNP fold, then build reps to stand for a Plebiscite Indy Election, etc, but then I thought no.
What good will Alba be?
Bye bye Murdo
Bye bye Liz Smith
Bye bye Alexander Stewart
Bye bye Annie Wells
Bye bye rather a lot of the lacklustre we bams who I never voted for.
Kind of raging that Both Votes SNP got these wasters in, and that the SNP aren’t raging about it too. No more.
Hopefully that’s enough common sense for even Peter to concede – SNP 1 and Alba 2 puts us in a much better place than we are now.
@ Johhny Martini re your comment about not liking the French…
If you used phrases like,
‘The coming plutocratic world rule is not something you can obtain independence from’,
when speaking to them, I’m not surprised you found them to be a bit aloof.
TNS2019 @ 12.40
I have checked to see what Alex Salmond said about bringing proceedings. He said ‘ as a direct result of the conduct ‘ of the permanent secretary ( around her role in the handling of harassment complaints against him ). We’ll have to see what this means, but it could relate to the leak to the press, or be a claim that she acted without authority in setting up the procedure in the way she did – particularly as she didn’t get approval from Whitehall.
I hope he is going down the latter route. I think this would result in more facts being put into the public domain The police will be investigating the criminal leak, but I don’t expect that to get any further.
I am sure you are not a lone voice in the wish you express.
Our unicameral system of government in Scotland was recommended in a Royal Commission report on the Constitution of the United Kingdom, set up by Harold Wilson in 1969. Coincidently, the Royal Commission began its work in the same year as the Vienna Covention on the Law of Treaties was signed. But not by the UK. The UK did sign it in January 1980. A few months AFTER the referendum on devolution and Mrs Thatcher winning the GE.
Andy Ellis,
You need to lighten up. Disagreeing with you and not voting for something no one can articulate, rationalise or explain the benefits of doesn’t make one a British nationalist either, yet you appear to believe it does.
Irrational and therefore intransigent separatist fanatics believe everyone who is not a separatist fanatic must be a different kind of fanatic, therefore they clutch at some illusory notion of British nationalism. I conclude therefore, that you are an irrational and intransigent separatist fanatic.
Nae offence like…
John Martini@12.47
That sounds pretty much like racism and/or prejudice to me.
John Martini@12.47
That sounds pretty much like racism and/or prejudice to me..
Sorry Martini
Looks like I’ve called you a racist twice.
Actually I’m not really sorry – you deserve it for resorting to ridiculously generalised garbage about a nation of sixty million people in such clearly prejudiced terms.
Tu es con je crois..
Arch Stanton @ 2:59 pm
“That sounds pretty much like racism and/or prejudice to me..”
These are key aspects of colonialism, which gave rise to demands for independence of most of the world’s population.
Alfred Baird,
What are you talking about?
@John Martini 12.47pm
I worked for an Anglo-French (or as they preferred Franco-British) company for quite a while and frequently travelled to Paris and Toulouse and worked with many French people. Doubtless there are many French people with racist views and opinions, just as there are Scots or English who share such a world view. Whether that allows us to extrapolate that the French people or society as a whole is institutionally racist seems rather a stretch.
In my quarter of a century in England I can’t say I noticed a huge amount of anti-Scottish feeling, but perhaps folk knew I wasn’t the kind to tolerate it. There was a certain amount of what I took to be fairly light hearted ribbing, comments about the Jocks etc., but I never took it that seriously. Doubtless now it would be a hate crime?
It was only in the last few years before I left England in 2018 that I noticed an upsurge in fairly open xenophobia and bigotry. The rise of UKIP and brexit definitely emboldened the undercurrent of little Englanderism that had (supposedly) been suppressed in recent decades. It simply suggested to me that the minority who held these views had never really gone away nor had they been convinced by the benefits of a multi-cultural society or immigration, or the free movement of labour within the EU.
Of course, most decent English folk didn’t share these views: many were as horrified as I was. But many were quite happy to spout regressive and ill-informed views about immigration and race. Prejudice against EU workers “stealing our jobs” often went hand in hand when you scratched the surface with prejudice against travellers, Roma, refugees from Afghanistan or the middle East etc. Sadly there are such people in most societies: it’s how we respond to them and how we convince them they are wrong that counts.
The French in my experience certainly seemed to have a soft spot for the Scots; the Auld Alliance still had a resonance, as did disparagement of “rosbifs”. I’ve found in my travels that most nations have someone else they make the butt of jokes and put downs.
@Arch 2.57pm
You over estimate yourself. I’m perfectly chilled. Supporting the continuation of the UK makes one a British nationalist. Supporting the independence of an independent Scotland makes one a Scottish nationalist. Unlike Nicola, I’ve never had any issue with the term and am inherently suspicious of those who try and disown it, unless they’re arguing for the dissolution of all nation states and the institution of a global government? I don’t see why anyone should object to being called a British nationalist or a unionist, but even if they do I couldn’t really care less. If it walks like a duck……
Your conclusions are of little interest to me. I don’t think you are a fanatic, nor did I say your were. It is however symptomatic of many Britnats who come on here and say they are open to persuasion to mischaracterise what people say to them. Doubtless the conversation would be a lot easier if you interacted with what I actually said and wrote, not with what you wrongly impute.
From memory you said you were open to persuasion, and perhaps you are. It obviously does happen as the increase in support for independence shows. Years ago I believed devo-max was probably the best we could hope for and thought independence was a pip dream.
I don’t take offence at your cheap shot about being “an irrational and intransigent separatist fanatic” because your opinion just isn’t important to me. I’m fairly convinced you’re not arguing in good faith, nor do I really believe you’re open to persuasion. Others can judge for themselves and may if nothing else learn something from the exchanges, whichever side of the argument they find more convincing.
@Mia 12:53
Thank you for an interesting response.
I am disappointed that Alex Salmond has already appeared to accept Scotland’s subservient position in the Union. We’ve had six years of grovelling. Impressions are important and I think an experienced politician like Alex Salmond should have chosen his words more carefully. All he had to do was replace ‘require’ with request.
Andy Ellis @ 4:32 pm
“Supporting the continuation of the UK makes one a British nationalist. Supporting the independence of an independent Scotland makes one a Scottish nationalist.”
That’s a rather simplistic perspective given the realities involved here. There is of course a very major difference between these two forms of ‘nationalism’, which you appear to ignore, or are not conscious of.
British ‘unionism’ is a trans-national nationalist political ideology dependent on coercion to enforce cultural integration and assimilation of other ethnic peoples’, which is cultural and linguistic imperialism, and to effect control over other peoples’ and their territories. This is also known as colonialism.
Scottish independence (or Scottish ‘nationalism’), in contrast, has nothing to do with the occupation of neighbouring countries, or to enforce Scottish culture and linguistic imperialism on other peoples’, nor does it involve the exploitation and coercion of other peoples and their economic resources. Scottish independence is about a people removing the oppressions brought about through trans-national nationalism.
Andy Ellis,
I’m afraid we must discontinue this rather one sided debate, on the basis that your ignorance and prejudice put you at a distinct disadvantage.
Perhaps another time..
Alfred,
You’re simply nae a there min!
Given the widespread and popular belief, in nationalist circles, that to be anything other than a Scottish nationalist in Scotland automatically makes one a British nationalist, can one then logically conclude that anyone who believes in EU membership is therefore a European nationalist?
If this sounds silly then it is probably because it is…
FWIW that LSE article, including the table, is archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210330073808/https:///blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scottish-independence-cost/
Arch Stanton @ 4:13 pm
“What are you talking about?”
You mentioned racism and prejudice, which are well known as key aspects of colonialism, as is fascism.
This is why oppressed peoples’ seek independence.
Alfred,
You consider that some idiot referring to the population of France as “selfish and racist” to be colonialism?! With as much respect as I can muster Alf, you really do need to get a grip!
The recent IFS report concludes that Scotland receives 30% more than England, via the Block Grant, to spend on public services.
Where does all that money go?
Just trying to get the email notifications to work again.
What we need is not SNP + another independence suppoting party acting as their foot stool. What we need is two or more other genuine independence supporting parties and NO SNP. SNP is too corrupt and full of cronies for me to vote for them or say I support it at all! I don’t want them shaping a new nation for themselves and their cronies. Why trust them when money has vanished and there’s all their crazy policies and direction as well as the endless cowards in the SNP who stayed quiet while this happened just so they could keep their comfortable jobs and positions?
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire or another different shaped frying pan for that matter is not worth it. Sacrificing everything just to get one goal is also not worth it if it means we lose that much in the process. Especially as we can and will get it no matter what in the end. That I firmly believe.