The separation of goals
In amongst a torrent of pretty mad analysis of the election result at the weekend, we noticed the most insane reason yet suggested for the loss of the SNP’s majority:
The co-founder of a much-lauded but little-read pro-independence website asserted that the SNP were cruising to victory until the Nats got the backing of the Scottish Sun and Nicola Sturgeon was pictured posing with the front cover endorsing her party.
The whole litany of gaping flaws in that argument is something the Yes movement has needed to talk about for some considerable time now. So let’s bite the bullet and do it.
The radical left has long had a major perception issue. It perceives that it speaks for “the working class”, and the blunt reality is that it doesn’t. Normal people simply DON’T despise the Sun. It’s NOT “toxic” – it’s the best-selling newspaper in both Scotland and England and most people who buy it and read it are working class.
Indeed, the radical left loathes most things that the working class actually like. You only need to say the words “Top Gear” to set them off onto a furious rant, yet it’s just about the most popular and successful programme the BBC has ever made. The working class also overwhelmingly supports the monarchy, no matter how much Cat Boyd of RISE might shout about hanging the “parasites” from lamp-posts or whatever. C2DE demographics are (sadly) the ones most likely to be angry about immigrants.
The Scottish Sun endorsing the SNP is not a new development, nor is an SNP First Minister posing with it.
Yet when it backed the Nats in 2011 and 2015 (having bitterly but unsuccessfully opposed them in 2007), and Alex Salmond was repeatedly seen posing happily with the paper, the SNP won a pair of vast landslides. It wasn’t “toxic” then and it isn’t now.
(Its support didn’t stop Labour winning elections either.)
As revealed by the hashtag in Kevin Williamson’s tweet, the excuse for the fresh outpouring of rage at the Scottish Sun last week was the verdict in the Hillsborough inquest. The left has never forgiven The Sun for the 1980s in general, but in particular for an appalling front cover story it ran shortly after the 1989 tragedy, and for which it apologised in the most abject terms a few years ago.
But the Scottish edition of the paper never ran the Hillsborough story. Practically the only journalist still associated in any way with the Sun who was there 27 years ago is Kelvin Mackenzie (the editor in 1989 and now a columnist), and the Scottish edition doesn’t carry his column either. There’s no justification for anyone screaming furiously about the Scottish Sun in relation to Hillsborough. It did absolutely nothing wrong.
And the left’s capacity for nursing historical grudges is oddly selective. It’s only 15 years since the Daily Record (which was by far Scotland’s biggest-selling newspaper at the time) was at the forefront of the homophobic “Keep Clause 2A” campaign, yet it seems to have been entirely forgiven while the Scottish Sun is still savaged after 27 years over an article it never ran and a man it doesn’t employ.
The fact is that there’s nothing uniquely loathsome about The Sun. Its owner is an unpleasant and unprincipled power-hungry billionaire, but that in no way distinguishes him from Paul Dacre (ultra-right-wing director of the Mail group), Richard “Dirty” Desmond (porn baron and owner of the Express), the Barclay Brothers (tax-dodging plutocrats in charge of the Telegraph and Spectator and formerly The Scotsman), Evgeny Lebedev (KGB boss turned capitalist oligarch and chief of the Independent) or just about any other newspaper proprietor.
The Sun (both editions) also has a deeply hostile attitude towards benefits recipients, but once again that’s something it has in common both with most other newspapers (including the supposedly left-wing Mirror, which is as happy as anyone else to run stories about “scroungers”) and the general public, particularly the working class.
Vitriolic, hysterical attacks on one newspaper that’s no worse than most are in reality nothing more than exercises in “virtue signalling” – a means by which those on the left jockey for position in the commentariat. They’re a kind of nuclear arms race, by which the only way to continue to gain attention (or avoid vilification) is to continually be more and more extreme in your self-righteous holier-than-thou piety than everyone else – the left’s equivalent of a Katie Hopkins article.
But we’re getting off the subject. The relevance to the independence movement is that the radical left in Scotland are convinced that the way to win people round to the Yes cause is to promise them a Marxist utopia. (To that end, many have delighted in the loss of the SNP’s majority and the fact that the election result threatens to make the party more beholden to the Greens, who they hope will push the Nats to the left.)
It’s a view that this website has consistently warned against for years, and indeed since our very first weeks of existence:
But it’s one that persists in the radical left despite all the available evidence. The fact of the matter is that even with the benefit of a greatly increased membership in the wake of the referendum, far more money to campaign with and a high media profile including appearances on almost all of the leaders’ TV debates, the Greens still secured only 6.6% of the vote on the list, and a miserable 0.6% in constituency seats. Just 3.6% of the total votes in the election were cast for the Greens.
The Greens are NOT a popular party. They’re especially not popular with the working class – their vote was most heavily concentrated in comfortable middle-class areas. The only constituency seats they seriously contested were Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin, both well-to-do bohemian enclaves.
(The former was won by the Tories because the Greens stood a no-hoper candidate who took a third of the pro-indy vote, enabling Ruth Davidson to sneak in and grab a huge propaganda victory by a few hundred votes.)
RISE and Solidarity, the other two parties of the radical left, did even worse, scraping barely 1% of the list vote between them. Their combined vote was just over half of UKIP’s. Taking policy advice from them and the Greens is, by any remotely sane analysis, NOT going to win over any of the 55% of Scots who voted No.
(If the public “despises” The Sun, yet still hands over its money for around 220,000 copies of it every single day, then how should we assess its opinion of a party that can garner just 11,000 votes which don’t cost anything?)
Political activists in Scotland are going to have to decide quite quickly what’s more important to them – the pursuit of independence, a goal tantalisingly within sight which will give them the chance to make their case against the SNP’s small-c conservatism at the ballot boxes of an independent Scotland; or railing with futile impotence about the monarchy and The Sun and Kelvin MacKenzie and Jeremy Clarkson forever, in the hopes of maybe securing a couple of pointless, powerless MSPs for a few years.
The latter option, of course, is much easier. There’ll never be a shortage of right-wing hate figures to shout at. It’ll always be possible to spend your time having a jolly day out with some student pals to one of Donald Trump’s golf resorts, bellowing through a megaphone at the bewildered minimum-wage employees from Eastern Europe then scooting off after an hour to post pictures on Twitter and wait for the revolution of the proletariat to spontaneously erupt while you’re at a gender-balanced poetry workshop.
It’s also much easier to make a marketable name for yourself that way. If you want to wallow in grotesque, ghoulish grief tourism about an event that happened before you were born in a social, cultural and political environment that you don’t understand the first thing about, you’ll always find a willing audience that loves to hear bogeymen being vitriolically excoriated in a small but noisy echo chamber of self-congratulation.
The downside is that other than inflating your own hungry ego it achieves absolutely nothing. You’ll never reach anyone who wasn’t already on your side, and soon enough someone will come along prepared to be even more pious and intolerant and extreme than you, at which point you’ll be the new baddie in the endless People’s Front of Judea factional wars of self-absorbed ideological purity that have divided and subdivided the left for more years than most people have been alive.
(It can only be a matter of time before RISE, like Solidarity and the SSP that gave birth to it, tears itself into ever-smaller splinter groups shrieking at each other over some ridiculously hair-splitting point of arcane principle or language, or an argument about which order the letters of “LGBTQIFA” should go in this week.)
The Scottish Parliament controls almost none of the levers necessary to bring about real change, and the UK is a fundamentally Conservative country which has elected Tories roughly 65% of the time throughout the entirety of living memory. The only way there’s even a slim chance of reaching the left’s goals is to secure independence first, and that won’t be done by terrifying normal people with lurid tales of a nation turned upside-down and inside-out by a bunch of over-excited junior Trotskys.
Normal people want their bins collected and their fires put out and their streets kept safe and potholes in their roads fixed and their illnesses treated. They rather like and respect the Queen. They buy The Sun and they watch Mrs Brown’s Boys. They have no idea what “land reform” is and nor should they – it would make no difference to most of them even if it happened. They don’t give a toss about “standardised testing” so long as their kids get educated. They don’t want their taxes put up.
(They might say that they do in opinion polls, but what they actually mean by that is someone else’s taxes, and if you campaign on a platform of putting up everybody’s – well, ask Scottish Labour what happens.)
The biggest contribution the radical left could make to the cause of independence now would be a period of silence. They’ve had a big platform for the last 18 months to make their case, and the electorate has rejected it resoundingly. Now they’re turning viciously and jealously on the parts of the Yes movement that HAVE been successful in connecting with real voters and actually persuading them.
The SNP was so badly damaged by Nicola Sturgeon posing with the Scottish Sun, so out of touch with the public’s hatred of the paper, that, er, it got the biggest vote ever recorded in a Holyrood election, increased its vote in both the constituencies and the list, and secured a record 59 constituency seats, as well as – barring some pretty spectacular unforeseen events – very likely securing the 2021 election too.
(The Nats’ total vote was 234,148 higher than 2011’s landslide, a 13% increase.)
The vehemence of your own personal beliefs does not translate to those beliefs being shared by others. That’s a basic lesson the radical left has needed to learn for a long time, and sadly it shows no sign as yet of doing so. We can only hope that if they can’t or won’t just shut up for a bit, the electorate’s stoic total indifference to their diatribes will at least stop them from fatally damaging the indy movement until such times as another referendum might come along.
It’s easier not buying any of them
Thanks Rev.
One doesn’t have to be a psychologist to work out why writing like this makes those allegedly pro-independence journalists, so prone to “virtue signalling”, really really jealous.
Yup, I only see the Sun as a means to the end – of the union. Those who read it are not debating issues of any import, simply consuming rubbish like those at a fast food establishment.
HERESY! BURN THE UNBELIEVER!
“It’s easier not buying any of them”
Thanks for that insight, Greg.
For the first time, I think, I am in a complete orgasm of agreement with every word of this article.
Very well said, Stuart.
I arrived at Wings via B***a C*******a; but, over the past year, I have spent less and less time on BC – I find its ultra-left-wing hectoring tone off-putting.
I fully endorse the Rev’s post on which we are commenting.
BTW, as regards The Sun, like many an old hot metal hack, I don’t like Rupert Murdoch, or his politics. However, from bitter experience, I acknowledge, he is a newspaper man to his fingertips, and, by and large, the News International journalists, a good few of whom I saw on their way up, are a superior breed to the dummies on the Record and Sunday Mail, or the Daily Mail crew.
As one former newspaper editor of my acquaintance said to me recently: “It demonstrates what a bad state the newspaper industry is in, that Murdoch is the best of the proprietors, and certainly the most-supportive of his journalists”.
Most folks just want to cut along with each other in peace. They want an equitable society where they don’t get crapped on from a great height. One where they have, as you say, a decent education system, decent life chances available and a reasonably honest and transparent form of government.
I also don’t think most folks in Scotland are out to topple the bastions of capitalism. They simply don’t want them dictating terms to their government, their democracy. (shrugs)
In short I’d say most folks simply want a government that gives a crap about its own population and acts accordingly with service and care for its communities. Y’know, rather than endlessly manipulate their opinions on any given subject for their personal gain kinda thing.
My idea of radical comes down to my choice of summer change of jammies. Trap door long johns back in the drawer for the heatwave and will it be shorts and a T or commando? 🙂
On the meeja? Yeah, pretty much all of it is owned by utter bastards. Who knew? 😀
I trust you are feeling better for getting that off your chest?
Reading it certainly made an already beautiful morning even better.
Take no prisoners Rev!
Well said says Fred who’s at present wolfing a Tunnock’s Teacake, also on the banned list of the uber correct.
The majority was lost because half the left wing yes voters didnae get aff their backsides to vote. Who’s fault is that? I include Dumbarton and North East Fife. They came out for WM 2015, but let others vote for them in 2016.Had they voted as a movement like 2015 then the SNP would be at 70 plus seats. That would have sent a real message to WM and Ruth.
Instead we have fatty parading around as if she beat the SNP. When in actual fact half the Labour voters switched to Tory and we didn’t counter it in numbers.
So very well said, Stu.
Should be required reading for all who hope to play a part in politics.
The fact, as you point out, is that the SUN Scotland with a Scottish editor and deputy editor did not run with the Hillsborough disaster and in recent years the Sun in Scotland actually had an editor and his deputy who were both members of the SNP.
Tabloid journalism – ie getting very often quite complicated issues into compelling copy in short sentences – is a very fine art indeed. It is just a difficult and just as clever as writing well for serious journals. But journalists as a general rule write to order in the tabloids. I have the oddest feeling that the proprietors of the SUN tumbled to the idea that the Tories as opposition to the SNP and independence would be a disaster for the union. Which,of course,it is.
Where will the Sun go now? Will Murdoch warm to his Scottish roots?
More interesting. Where does the Record go?
I afraid you an count me in the “walk past the news stand” brigade.
Sites like this has illustrated clearly the manipulation and misinformation the MSM can peddle to an unsuspecting readership.
To be honest the only time I really pay attention to any of them is after they get caught out in another SNP bad assassination attempt.
Then I trawl through the online ones and see who was the worst/most hysterical.
So far the Daily Mail and Express are streets ahead.
The Suns biggest flaw as far as I see it or relegating a UK army helicopter crash with. 5 fatalities to page 11 when some soap actress fills the cover.
But that’s what sells newspapers like the sun……..
On balance I don’t think the Sun added anything to the campaign (although personally I would have avoided holding the paper up) but I seriously doubt that this was a pivotal moment. The Scottish Sun is a different paper and has always ploughed a different political furrow. It may be that some people forget this but I am not so sure.
Also if the fact that it is owned by Murdoch is an issue then surely the Sun and Sky is also beyond the pale (and anything else he owns).
It certainly would not have driven SNP voters to go out and vote Tory or Lib Dem as they have little issue with Murdoch and as we can see the Labour vote did not move much at all from the forecast 22% so they gained nothing either.
I think the biggest problems the SNP faced were apathy and complacency. When you are odds on favourite to win by a mile it does take the excitement out of an election. The forecast of a 65% to 70% turnout was woefully off the mark. I think that it may well have been SNP voters that took it easy.
That said I can fully understand antipathy to the Sun but I just do think it has the influence it used to have – on both sides of the border.
The question of whether non Dom tax evaders should own the Press. Against the Ministerial Code and lied about.
The Sun is not popular 200,000 copies 5.2 million pop. More popular than the Greens.
The referendum was lost because the Yes movement didn’t win over the middle class, bankers, and newspaper proprieters. The sad thing is that the working class don’t win elections. And a future referendum won’t be won until Scotland’s establishment is persuaded that they will make more profit with independence than tied to a suffocating union.
“I think the biggest problems the SNP faced were apathy and complacency. When you are odds on favourite to win by a mile it does take the excitement out of an election.”
Despite voters being told for months on end that the election was a foregone conclusion and they might as well not bother, the SNP increased its constituency vote by over 150,000. Funny sort of complacent apathy.
You could argue that the SNP’s reluctance to accept the settled will of the people in a referendum on independence is just as quixotic and idealistic as those who voted for the Greens, RISE et al. Also i don’t remember the SNP being too open to these arguments in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s when they were polling in the low 20’s…”ok you want independence but thats not going to happen so just vote labour to make sure you get a left wing government”
Ultimately im a romantic and hope people vote for what they believe even if they know that the likelhood of that actaully changing things is low. OK you believe in independence and nothing else (or at least that nothing is more important)…others don’t…why can’t you just accept that?
O/T
Great to see that we’re back on track.
I posted this latterly, see we have moved on and hope I’m allowed to post it on here.
Forget about statistics, the Greens and so on. Let’s move on as you can be rest assured that Moothy et all will be working hard on a strategy right now, led by Tomkins, to infiltrate colleges, universities etc etc … everything and anything … to boost their numbers.
The BBC and corrupt media, our GREATEST enemy, will be lining up to put a spin on every last word that comes out of Holyrood: FOR Moothy (any anti-Independence voice) and AGIN Nicola.
Let’s get focused and start supporting people like Ponsonby and Robertson.
@ Robert Louis at 7:54am ….
link to indiegogo.com
Stuart you most be totally worn out and seem to be down with the result. Don’t be because it’s not as bad as you seem to think it is, excellent in fact when you think of all the doom and gloom propaganda that’s been spouted in relation to the oil situation, 15 billion black hole and so on. Don’t forget that it has been YOU who has contributed MOST of all to the Independence cause. This site is totally unique. Your articles picking up on media lies and distortions, on a daily basis, have educated thousands of others and through you, them and us have managed to combat the corrupt media propaganda machine (not Bella et al). No mean task. They, SCUM, didn’t win. YOU DID.
Can you imagine what the result could have been like if it hadn’t been for you? I shudder to think. We NEED you Stuart. Take a break. Head off to the Bahamas or whatever and come back refreshed and ready to battle on. You could even think of buying a boat out there, anchor it in International waters and do a Radio Caroline on them (fund raised by us), lol.
Anyway it’s a beautiful day where I am. Hope it is for you too. A couple of songs you may have heard your grandparents or parents sing. May even have sung yourself.
We live in a fantastic country that is home to millions of fantastic people: something to REALLY fight for. C’mon let’s do it x
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
Good article. Good timing. The challenge is on with a max of 5 years until the next Yes chance if we are voted out of Europe. After being voted out the popular opinion will swell for another independence referendum, but it will be opposed both in the parliament and in Westminster to begin with. Holyrood will then begin to demand it and the longer Westminster oppose it, the greater the Yes support will grow. Another Tory government will be voted in to London prior to Scottish elections and unless we are “permitted” to hold another referendum the Scottish election will return a massive majority for the swift Yes vote. I just saw all that in the bottom of my tea cup.
Of course England might vote to stay in Europe and then fa’kens.
Claiming that the Scottish Sun is somehow separate from the other is a bit like saying the Scottish Labour Party is separate from the UK party.
I did not like seeing Nicola Sturgeon displaying her copy of the Sun. I do not think that is it was necessary and IMO it probably cost as many (if not more) votes than it won.
You argue that Alex Salmond did the same thing. This does not make it right and he did not do it in the week of the Hillsborough decision.
“Take a break.”
I plan to. This needed said first.
Normal people want their bins collected and their fires put out and their streets kept safe and their illnesses treated.
I was out on the streets every weekend for 2 months and pot holes were raised as an issue more times than the EU, tax and immigration put together. It is the little things that people see every day that matter.
“Claiming that the Scottish Sun is somehow separate from the other is a bit like saying the Scottish Labour Party is separate from the UK party.
You argue that Alex Salmond did the same thing. This does not make it right and he did not do it in the week of the Hillsborough decision.”
Oh fuck off, Bryan. The Scottish Sun DID NOT RUN THE HILLSBOROUGH STORY. That in and of itself proves it’s not the same paper. Last year the English edition said the SNP were evil monsters while the Scottish edition said “Vote SNP”. They are, self-evidently, different papers with different editors and different reporters, which happen to share owners and large chunks of non-political content.
Several reasons why the SNP are shy of majority…
The anti-SNP vote going tactically to LibDems and Labour in two seats with a large % of MoD-related jobs and also to the Tories in our delightfully pro-Union capital city.
Good constituency results being offset by less generous pickings from the regional list – exactly what the system was rigged to achieve.
The last majority administration was a fluke – an aligning of the planets in political terms – one that was never meant to happen.
The SNP support failed to get off its backside as a result of the media’s assertion that all the SNP needed to do was to ensure NS didn’t spontaneously combust in order to win a third term.
I’m sure there are others equally valid, but The Sun being responsible? Please…
Well said Rev, you’ve put it a lot better than I ever could, but, for once, I agree with every word. Doffs bunnet.
Macart @ 11.44, good post as usual from you, and I think you are spot on also with your analysis Bunnet doffed again.
Roddy Macdonald says “For the first time, I think, I am in a complete orgasm of agreement with every word of this article.”
I don’t want to impinge on Roddy’s privacy, but I’m with him there!
I cannot argue with much of that, Rev Stu. Yet I hope that your criticism of the Greens and the more left-wing activists is not just going to inflame the usual suspects.
The point is that just as the Greens & left-wingers can, and often do, criticise the SNP, both as a party and as a government it is no bad thing that they do so.
Any more than it is no bad thing that SNP supporters are often critical of the other independence supporting parties – or indeed critical of the SNP itself.
No political movement or party should be beyond criticism nor should they condemn such criticism. Differing opinions are a healthy sign and they defeat complacency, smugness and over confidence.
None of which should be taken as a sign of internal factionalisation. It is much more a sign of people being aware that no party or faction is perfect and thus there are none that cannot be improved.
It is political movements we are considering – not brainwashed dictatorships.
Hi Stu
The SNP did put on votes and turnout was up but I think we could have got more out. I think the 50%+ figure was achievable if the turnout had been 65%. It might have made the difference by securing Baillie’s seat and one or two others.
I am not complaining. I think we did pretty damned well and I do agree that the Sun thing did not register. It is an issue that concerns the politically active rather than the voting public. We can argue till the cows come home over such matters but it simply doesn’t resonate more widely.
“One of the big mistakes made in the indyref was being prescriptive about what indy meant politically”
I hope this avoided in future. People can see the make-up of Scotland’s parties and politicians – broadly social democratic.
Scotland has a history of universal, state-funded education. There is a grounding and belief in universalism across a wide range of issues.
Surely voters understand this broad-base and there is no need to cloud the issue of independence in talk of a republic, socialism, nationalisation, etc. These are totally different issues to be decided by future, elected Scottish governments.
Soft “No” voters are surely more likely to be scared off by all this detailed political projection? They are open to be duped that a “Yes” to independence is likely to pre-determine a whole set of future events they may not believe in.
I think that’s about right. Some points well made.
The smaller parties hardly made an impact and the greens got something out of it where they could in the City areas.
Let’s accept that and move on.
Great numbers are buying the Sun but only for the horse/dog pages and the footie in most cases. It’s popular so what, just accept it and move on.
So is the Great British…whatever on auntie tv … move on!
I stopped buying the Record in 1973 ish during the 3-day week and a local chip shop lost my custom forever (for a poster saying electricity workers F,ck off) as I was on strike during the 3-day week and was part of the electrical unions power cuts action.
I was younger then. I never bought a Record since and never apologised… 🙂
PS: She apologises.
Hope she will learn to be more careful but I doubt it.
link to archive.is
Probably one of the best peices you have written.
Thank you.
Cheers Stu. I know only one radical well enough to speak to on a regular basis.He voted NO because his cause reaches beyond Scotland’s borders to his English brothers.
His wish is to change the UK, even though there is absolutely no evidence of any movement in the direction he wishes to go.
I put it to him that Scottish independence first, direction of travel second would be an achievable goal, but his utter hatred of the SNP trumps everything. Murdoch and Trump’s chums, apparently.
He is as much a hindrance to Scottish independence as the London establishment he loathes also, hamstrung by dogma which allows only one way. His way.
His language towards me has lately become as intemperate as the unionists I know, which is saying something, even though we are essentialy on the same side.
A ‘chronic’ as Derek Bateman would say.
Hi Rev, Really glad to hear you’re taking a break. God knows you’ve earned it.
Like Petra above I think you are the single most important force for Independence outside the SNP government.
You are utterly irreplaceable. Have a good time.
Excellent article, most people are at the centre, straying too far to left or right only frightens people.
Until you’re blue in the face, I’m afraid, Stu.
The prize is to wangle a seat on the Holyrood list, and fight the good , if never ending fight against Ra Bosses.
I have ceased taking any Dead Tree Scrolls. Print is dead.
From now until Independence we require single minded Unity.
But power egos among some minor luminaries seem to bubble up every now and then.I want to get rid of the Saxe Coburgs/Battenburgs. But it can wait.
Great analysis.
Haven’t posted here in a long while but yea, what Stu says.
I even bought an Amazon Fire Stick for my fuck off capitalist flat screen telly so I can continue watching ‘the real’ Top Gear.
Clarkson is a fucking odious twat but It’s a cross I’ll bare.
I don’t blame the Greens or RISE, it’s that bastard d’Hondt that needs a doing.
Kevin Williamson is wrong on the polling figures being connected with the Sun endorsement. There was a gradual dip in SNP support starting a month before the election and the actual result was on trend with that.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Many in the SNP expected this to happen as the campaign started to heat up and all the media attacks began. A BBC biased audience on independence didn’t help in the last debate.
The ‘Both Votes SNP’ strategy was all about holding onto that lead as much as possible, and fighting complacency – partly caused by the small parties spreading the myth that SNP constituency seats were safe.
Truth is the Tories fought a clever campaign by making it all about the constitution, and focusing unionist votes behind them.
But that was expected all along, and the sensible response to it should have been to focus pro-indy votes behind the SNP, to keep open the chance of a second referendum, and to keep the momentum going.
And at the very least, not attacking the main independence party in the final week of an election campaign and discouraging votes for them. Absolutely idiotic if your aim is self-government for this country.
Once again, clear incisive analysis. Thank you. We will continue to consolidate -‘make haste slowly’; I hope you realise how much we rely on you to sift your way through the dross, debunk and provide the kind of links we need to substantiate or disprove claims made in the MSM. Take a break man!
My own personal opinion is that it was an error of judgement to appear holding the Sun so soon after the recent verdict on Hillsborough.
However compared with; lying to pensioners and about job security with a No vote, renewal of Trident and attacking countries in the ME, IDS and his evil reforms of benefits, protecting paedophiles in WM, etc etc,…
I was campaigning and at polling stations during the Holyrood elections and some previous SNP voters said they were voting for some other party because of; local issues mainly to do with rubbish in the closes, fracking, ‘timidity’ re tax raising, ‘I love Nicola but wish she would stop going on about indy’, and NO-ONE mentioned the Sun newspaper.
Can we not have Will unblocked, just for this article? Please. 🙂
Btw, was NCN actually the Rev. having a bit of fun?
People are complex entities as it is. They do not fit into stereotypes en masse. Sometimes I think the expectation of political parties is that their supporters are in total agreement with what they dictate as their preferred policy. I do not think they do.
One thing of which I am certain and the reason I visit this site is that I want independence.That is unshakeable. The SNP offer that very thing openly.
Socialism is itself a broad church with many levels. Not everybody can agree on what constitutes a real Socialist.but we can agree that the single ideal of freedom is what we all want.
Have your well deserved break Stu,and take with you my personal thanks.
Thrawn
‘OK you believe in independence and nothing else (or at least that nothing is more important)…others don’t…why can’t you just accept that?’
Because self governance is the first most basic democratic right of all nations.
Whether we have a left,centre or right leaning govt. is something which may change according to wishes of the people of Scotland.
The interests of Scotland being paramount whatever hue the government.
That is something that cannot happen whilst Scotland is controlled by Westminster, which will never put Scotland’s interests ahead of it’s own priorities.
Like you didn’t know that already.
A good article. I can relate to this as I was a commited Marxist in my teens and early 20s, much to the amusement of my staunchly royalist Sun reading working class parents. Student politics could damage the Yes side more than a newspaper.
I can almost understand the Greens fielding candidates in Bohemian city areas, but why in Fluffy’s rural constituency?
Great Article Stu.
Lets sort out our common enemy first.
Stewart Hosie will need to ensure that the SNP are the YES movement and that they are more vocal and assertive.
I thought that the demo at Pacific Quay was very positive and disappointed that there were no follow ups.
With no support in the media the SNP needs to be out on the streets as much as possible, more SNP organised independence marches,rallies,demos,cavalcades, all having increasing attendances. More support required in and on online sites. The SNP needs a free newspaper similar to the Metro to get the message over to the general public, unionist lies need to repudiated as soon as possible, not left to fester.
The campaign against Alastair Carmichael was a great example of how Yessers can unite and support those who would be brushed aside by the elite westminster establishment.
WoS also highlighted the ludicrous case of the starving woman who was fined an absurd amount for theft of food, meantime the taxpayers especially those on PAYE subsidize and pay the non-elected members of the House of Lords.
Remember it is teamwork that will get Scotland it’s Independence.
I’ve stayed fairly silent for the last 18 months, commenting on blogs at least.
Whilst this is as excellently written as ever Stu, I don’t see how lending your obviously amazing talent and isolated (and incorrect imo) tweets as a vehicle to ostracise the hard left from the ongoing conversation in the indy movement which exactly all that can be achieved with this.
I can already envisage my twitter time line becoming more ‘yeah, bloody lefties using ipads’ which is also the best metaphor for the premise of this article.
Why not go the whole hog and condemn the NHS, the welfare state, free prescriptions etc.? All of which are far left institutions which are imperiled by our small c-conservatism allowing neoliberals to eat away at them – not really a hidden story or hard left scaremongering is it?
The left has the right to defend these institutions and the political ethos that created them, and the desire to see that practice carried forward.
The left should not shut up for the foreseeable future in my opinion, for the simple fact that as much as it saddens many, the No’s still have it, and may still have it for quite a long time, perhaps long enough to see these institutions utterly destroyed by neoliberalism and the apathy of many who just don’t care as their kids get educated as you put it.
I would think for most people the minutiae of political bickering is intensely boring and puts them off.
From my own perspective, railing against what has been said in a newspaper or online, to relatives or friends is often met with bemusement and blank looks. For them it is simply another world and to say that they would change their mind based on a front page picture suggests an investment in a belief system they are simply not part of.
This is one of the reasons I like WoS, I get to rail and vent about these things.
Many of us here have experienced poverty first hand and the editorial policy or endorsement of a newspaper is pretty low on your list of day to day priorities. In fact even buying a newspaper is pretty low down that list.That does not deny the huge power newspapers have, hence why Wos exists.
However we are looking at the big picture and I believe that a Socialist Utopia was one of the things most off putting to No voters. Ironically the Tory vote going up may reassure many of those that Independence would not mean their voice is not heard.
A decent standard of living is all that most people want with opportunities through education and work and care for health and wellbeing when you need it. How you achieve that should be decided, amongst other things, by your vote.
We do not have that at present with a Westminster government which is why I believe we should be independent first before anything else. BC and others appear to have no real perspective on this.
Spot on Rev as ever. And something I’ve been trying to tell people for a long time especially since the election..
I feel like a record player going round and round…
People say the SNP didn’t get the vote. How to you get the vote out, or indeed sustain any campaign which starts, centres, and finishes with an uphill battle against the media? We need a continual presence on the street of something like the order of the YES campaign before we begin turning heads. With they best will in the world, (check); the best arguments in the world, (check); the best people in the world, (check…mostly), it is still unsustainable to keep it up.
If we look at the peaks and troughs of the whole Independence campaign, we are pretty good at getting people active at the grassroots level, but once that peak emphasis passes, without a supportive media, our campaign regresses much further than it properly should because people tune in to “touch base with the revolution” but just find a complete load of Unionist tosh bouncing off their ear drums and telling them it never happened. They switch off, and drift off back into their own world; lost to us until the next big event can grab their attention.
It’s the media. It’s the media. It’s the media. Not just the bullshit interference from the BBC and newspapers, but just as important is the media on the other side of the street; the news media which ISN’T there; Our media, the channel we desperately need to keep our support engaged and informed.
It feels like we have to start every campaign from ground zero, and spend the first few months fixing punctures and blowing the dust off the placards.
We need an effective media to sustain ourselves, and maintain the high benchmarks we achieve.
Media is the key. I cannot see our ultimate success until we have this issue of broadcasting laid to rest.
Completely O/T, but Rev see the next time you commission a survey , please ask the question,”do you completely understand how the votes casted, are allocated?”.
Well said Stew, but what I will say about the hard left is that they work really hard and are great at getting people out to campaign.
The average Yes supporter will sit in the house and read the sun while watching top gear.
Bravo Rev.
I have given up on them….to find the truth/facts,sometimes you have to crawl through the jaggy’s.
Some folk just want to tiptoe through the tulips….fuckem.
Thanks
Enjoy the break,well earned. 😉
Standing in ovation Rev.
Needed to be said and courageously put.
Petra, “Take a break.”
Rev Stuart Campbell, “I plan to”.
Good man, you certainly deserve it.
The contribution this site makes is immense, with an effect which can’t be be judged in hard and fast numbers. Yet we all know we are, in a hugely significant way, where we are because of Wings’ contributions these past years.
Enjoy your break, Stu.
Thank goodness for Wings and a bit of sanity. We won, yes we won, so we did not win a majority but thank goodness we won. Now if people could get their head round how difficult as Stuart said it is to win a majority in a Parliament set up in such a way that it is practically unatainable. We now have the joy of showing the Tories up for what they are.
The Sun is no different from the Mirror, the Record or the Daily Mail, the people who read them are practically interchangeable, on the most part elderly, they buy the paper of choice on price, some buy it for the back page or they were used to getting their TV veiwing off the paper.
May I repeat something worth saying, WE WON last Thursday.
You’ve done it again Stu
This telling the truth stuff will be your downfall you know they love to shoot the messenger, just checking my watch to see how long it takes for the “Aye Buts” to come along with all their reasons as to why you’re right but you’re wrong
As you say most folk are somewhere in the middle and hope pretty much for the Goldilocks life, not too hard, or too soft, just nice and then pretty much leave us alone
Political success should be when you ask your politicians, is everything OK and they answer YES, then that’ll do for me
My kids can count and I can eat my sticky bun in tranquility
I’ve oversimplified, there’ll be a complaint I never addressed every demographic in the entire world in under 150 words
Life’s shit again
Rev,
Agreed that you be need a break.
Will you set up a fund raiser so that we can contribute a little fund for you to do something nice?
I think you should?
Yeah, I think I’ll take a break too. Voluntary or involuntary!
Van MOT time 🙁
What is the point of all that Green-baiting? Is it because while both the Greens and the SNP leadership see independence as a means to an end, the Greens organised towards their end (all agree on the philosophical basis, majority and minority views on independence but nobody sees it as a big deal), while the SNP is organised the other way round (all agree on independence, majority and minority views on philosophical basis but nobody sees it as a big deal)?
Seriously, with the Greens you know exactly what you get – it’s in the manifesto, the Greens are a policy-led party. If you get so worked up about what they won’t, just disagree. If you get so worked up about the (very transparent and straight) way the Greens go about trying to achieve their aims, I’m sorry, that falls back on you.
Found it quite remarkable that the Oran Mor Menshevik Collective foamed at the mouth re The Sun, but at least a couple of them contribute to the Grauniad, which not only grossly misrepresented the Yes campaign throughout the Referendum campaign, but also exhibited some quite outrageous quasi-racist commentary re Scots, using epithets that, were they used on other groups would have be roundly condemned. Rusbridger, White, Preston, and especially Steve Bell were the chief exponents.
Nice bedfellows.
[…] Wings Over Scotland The separation of goals In amongst a torrent of pretty mad analysis of the election result at the weekend, we […]
Got to say great work Rev,i have been bemused by just how little the indy parties members seem to understand how the damn electoral system actually works.
Or that the majority thing was never on the cards due to the SNP`s electoral stratagy of going after the 1st vote.
The way i see it Nicola would have to have dropped out the running in certain constituances to get that and in doing so let Labour into opposition which was a big risk that the blue tories might pick up the yoon vote and pip labour to the win which they did and anyway its madness to even try to manipulate.
Nope the smart thing was to show up the electoral system by camaigning like a FPTP election,well as we all can see we increased the vote but got very little reward for doing so from the electoral system if anything it rewarded parties who cant connect with the majority.
The whole thing is just one big con if we had got that vote westminster UK britnat style of democracy it would have broken records.
Indy will be the long path we decided that in 2014 so just get out the popcorn and watch the clown show for another few years,but dont worry a trigger will appear well its the britnats it wont be long before they come up with another great way to screw up the UK
“virtue signalling” – nice to have a descriptive catch phrase for that because it’s bugged me for years, the folk who smother you with their intolerance of your nuanced views on complex topics cos they’re so bloody eh, virtuous.
As for the rest of the content, agree with lots of it, particularly the theme that anyone who went to University can talk of from personal experience: the socialist worker types who plan the revolution, eh, like Alistair Darling.
That doesn’t all mean we have to give in to popularism, but I’m very much in agreement with Rev that minor divisions and intolerance of those should be discussed after the first round, which is independence. Otherwise you’re like the (probably disingenuous) labour supporter I
Agree with Major Bloodnok d’Hondt needs reworked. Obviously set up to be a block to the SNP, never thinking that they would increase in popularity to today’s numbers.
Was it ever set up to get the third party’s leader into Holyrood along with a failed MP and now failed MSP along with a failed Slab former leader who thinks we are not programmed to run our own country? and too many others too mention.
Scottish Labour same old same old.
“the Greens still secured only 6.6% of the vote on the list, and a miserable 0.6% in constituency seats. Just 3.6% of the total votes in the election were cast for the Greens.”
Plee-ease. The stuff with the 3.6% is mathematical nonsense.
But let’s just assumed the Greens did take votes from the SNP, let’s do some number crunching. Say the Green would have got the customary 4%, and the SNP list vote would not have fallen, would there any more SNP MSPs? Any more independence-supporting MSPs?
Harsh, but true.
What struck me about the ‘voices of the Left’ (and I consider myself left of centre) was the almost comedic supernatural ability to say and do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time at almost every opportunity.
The sad thing for me is seeing many of the ‘alternative’ media`s voices coming out in support of RISE and the whole ‘both votes SNP bad’ mantra. I understood why the Sunday Herald was pushing it, but I thought those who had spent the previous three years fighting against MSM propaganda would be able to see through a thoroughly agenda driven push to split the SNP vote.
Ach, it`s done now. The way I see it, you`re either for independence or you`re not. If you are for independence then we are in this together for the long haul.
There`s enough crap being thrown at the independence movement, we shouldn`t be throwing bricks at each other.
Saying that, if you were a Yesser in 2014, and at some point we`ve fallen out but you are still a Yesser, then you`re pint is waiting at the bar.
Let`s talk.
“virtue signalling” – nice to have a descriptive catch phrase for that because it’s bugged me for years, the folk who smother you with their intolerance of your nuanced views on complex topics cos they’re so bloody eh, virtuous.
As for the rest of the content, agree with lots of it, particularly the theme that anyone who went to University can talk of from personal experience: the socialist worker types who plan the revolution, eh, like Alistair Darling.
That doesn’t all mean we have to give in to popularism, but I’m very much in agreement with Rev that minor divisions and intolerance of those divisions should be discussed after the first round, which is independence. Otherwise you’re like the (probably disingenuous) labour supporter I talked to during the indy ref who said she didn’t see the point of independence if we were going to be in the EU and use the pound. I asked her would she vote for indy if we were out of those; she paused, and said yes. So I said, so it’s a kind of all or nothing approach from you? She walked off.
Are there really people who see a picture of Nicola on the front of The Sun and decide that’s it I’m voting Tory or whatever that party is called now.
The Sun seems to be able to come up with some very witty headlines. I liked the one about Neil Oliver:
Oliver, please can we have no more
Although their headline about the result of the Scottish election “Just like Nat’ was pretty good the best was in the Evening Express
Nic’s back Labour Whacked Tories thrown a bone.
Like about a million other YESers, I agree with all of this. I hope people like Lesley Riddoch and Greens take it on board, especially
(The Nats’ total vote was 234,148 higher than 2011’s landslide, a 13% increase.)
Have a great time off!
*Your pint. Not you`re. Gah
well i agree with the points made , most people turn off when politics are mentioned , they are just to busy getting by from one week to the next.
I think most people believe the VOW has been delivered , try finding any media outlet that bursts this little plook they simply dont know .
The same media announces a great Tory revival , aye ok I think the term is the devil is in the detail.
The media hold all the cards for now, but we hold the ability through education of the History of this country , not the English version of our History .
The first thing the media will proclaim is SNP brainwashing and indoctrination , well name any country on the planet whose people dont know their own history , OOPS one comes to mind us Scotland 300 years of a version of Scottish History with the relevant bits removed , for our own good and with the best of intentions to promote peace and harmony, Aye f/n right .
Hey Rev
Come for a tour round Scotland – plenty of places to stay.
I did not like Nicola posing with the SUN but anybody who claims that it affected their vote is a first order, unreliable, unstable zoomer who will always find a way to disrupt a positive process that doesn’t pander enough to the big ego that is so painfully squeezed into their wrteched, malfunctioning little excuse of a brain.
Ohhh, they’re going to hate you even more for this. Deep down they probably know it’s true though. Great piece.
When I think about I probably despise ‘The Sun’ less than I despise ‘The Telegraph’ ‘The Scotsman’ ‘The Herald’ ‘The Times’ & the BBC.
I don’t care that Nicola posed with a copy of The Sun but I would have if she had posed with a copy of The Scotsman.
If you are not a communist at 16 there is something wrong with your heart.
If you are still one at 20 there is something wrong with your head.
…and if you are a Tory you are on the wrong site.
I don’t want the right wing politics of the UK to be replaced by far left politics. I don’t think I am alone in seeking a left of centre country with a fair sociey. I’m happy to have a far left and a far right representation but prefer the many shades in between that will probably emerge.
(ps I didn’t consider “New Labour” left of centre. I’m thinking more like the Labour Party before that one.)
Oh dear me, how embarrassing. I’ve posted previously “‘tinternet is not a write only medium” and been guilty myself, fortunately the Rev in a moment of unusual kindness removed both my comments.
Uh, yes, having read the article I totally agree. I’d go a bit further, it’s not just the last 18 months the left has been allowed to make all the running, it was through the Indy Ref as well. Yes, Labour had to be broken, but a lot of people were put off by the idea that an Indy Scotland would be hard left, when at heart it’s just a bit left of centre.
This is indeed an article that had to be written.
I think most people who read the sun do so for entertainment rather than news.
Is there any research out there on this kind of subject ?
I see Johann and Ken McIntosh are being suggested for presiding officer.
Not two names I thought would be put forward.
Enjoy your well earned holiday Stuart.
Around the world in 80 days perhaps ?
The Sun’s version of events seems to be that they, willingly or not, accepted as gospel the police version of events. Completely ignoring the fact that they in no way exonerated the police or relieved them of any responsibility for their failure in their duty to control the crowd.
That the Sun have actually apologised is kind of telling about the hardline nature of the radical left. The same kind of political agitators seen elsewhere. These are the fuckers who’d have you against a wall and shot.
If that wasn’t bad, I briefly saw an article in the Daily Record from a Celtic fan moaning about being treated as some kind of criminal because they’d turned up late and were refused entry. Makes sense in that it’s the police’s job to prevent the rushing in at the tail end that contributed to Hillsborough. In that case though it’s a case of the police not even keeping track of how many had gone in each gate. Unionist rag giving air to a moan about the police acting on experience in preventing a repeat of the failing of another force and taking into account Ibrox.
Some of the local sunday rags were putting forward an alternative explanation as to why the SNP “lost” the election. They say it’s all down to Named Person. Might be a grain of truth as I finally snapped at one of my friends on facebook after she posted for the umpteenth time a piece of crap from No2NP. Might have been part of the deliberate targeting of the female vote.
No doubt if the SNP capitulate entirely on that they’ll find some other supposed reason for the loss of support.
The real reason though is that the majority in 2011 was the result of freakish good luck. Better results in the FPTP seats. Just the same as Davidson is benefiting from.
A masterclass.
We need to start building Indy friendly institutions so that Indy thinking becomes the norm.
Well said that man
Two branches of the RBS closing their doors in my county, “Better Together”?
Have a nice break Rev.nobody deserves it more than you after all you’ve done.
This article is spot on as a statement of where we are atm.
All I gotta add is that Rise/Bella anti-SNP/WOS shit slinging with a’don’t vote SNP’ thrown in was termed as necessary critisism of a too powerful SNP needing a kick in the balls.
Do me a fucking favour.
Seems like we’ve all to forgive and forget(forgot fallen Rise already-not too difficult is it?)and buddy up for the good of the YES family.
Well for my part Rise can fuck right off and I really didn’t think I’d ever say something like that.
When the chips were down Rise and Bella and others showed their real priority- their own limited pointless ego’s.
Indy wasn’t considered inportant enough for those arseholes.
Hopefully Real Independence minded people will not be so manipulated for Indyref2 cos thats coming down the line like a runaway train.
We need to prepare for it now.
And as for the Greens they’re right now the greatest thing since sliced bread(organic of course).
63 SNP+6 GREENS= 69.
NOW THERE’S A NICE NUMBER IN HOLYROOD.
NOT LONG NOW.
Yes, this definitely needed to be said. If anyone was going to draw a line under recent events/conversations, then by god I’m glad it was you!
Still, all talk of holidays is always depressing..means I’ll defo have to get other stuff done instead of checking out this page regularly. :{
West coast is nice in the summer, just don’t be a stranger..ya hear 😀
@Clootie
“If you are not a communist at 16 there is something wrong with your heart.If you are still one at 20 there is something wrong with your head.”
Being on the wrong side of 21 I don’t have the energy to be radical. 🙂
Thanks for everything, enjoy your break you deserve it
the pursuit of independence, a goal tantalisingly within sight
And also categorically and unequivocally off the table for at least half a decade?
Agree with most of this although complaining about Donald Trump is always a good thing. If he becomes President it will be a world-wide hobby.
Enjoy your break. Soon the Local election battles will begin. Expect a bunker mentality at Tammany Hall.
Now with some insight on this threat and spleens being vented on the previous thread can we get back to focusing on the big picture again INDEPENDENCE FIRST LAST & ALWAYS.
Ian Brotherhood mooted a Wings getogther some time ago,. Tam Jardine again made the suggestion last nite , lets get ah chin waggling session sorted ,they,re,s a wide diverse eclectic representation of all political views on Wings & about time we as a Body put that to the test. Im well aware that Wings over Scotland isent exceptable to a lot of people in the Indy movement ,but we have a duty to inform people & where we can heal wounds we do that also.
‘the left’s equivalent of a Katie Hopkins article’
I love that! It’s pure poetry! I do wish I could write like Stu infact I wish I could string a sentence together. However I won’t let put me off posting my views.
‘Glasgow Kelvin and Edinburgh Central, both well-to-do bohemian enclaves’
That’s interesting! I wonder if the fact that both these constituencies are jam packed with students influenced their decision.
The Ruth Davidson NO party didn’t do very well in Glasgow Kelvin so perhaps it wasn’t all the RUK students in Central Edinburgh who gave their votes to the ‘Ruth NO Party’ it must have been all the voters who wanted an end to the Named Person Act, more college places & No referendum.
It looks as if they are not going to get what they want re the ‘Named Person Act’
The problem with the more college places could be solved quite simply. Just quit calling all the colleges ‘universities’ and hey presto problem solved unless what the ‘Ruth NO Party’ want is more part-time college classes in flower arranging & Great British Baking.
Carolyn Leckie puts the election results into perspective in the National & appeals for the Yessers to unite, well! not all the Yessers of course. Tommy Sheridan’s not mentioned! 🙂
Have a good holiday Stu, & watch your back, we need U M8.
dakk says:
9 May, 2016 at 1:30 pm
Enjoy your well earned holiday Stuart.
Around the world in 80 days perhaps ?
Ruby reples
I got the impression from his Twitter account that he might be doing that in the supermarket.
You know me ronnie anderson I’m always up for a bit of heeling.
It is ironic that Marx warned against the inherant dangers of a rigorous adherence to ideology, in his “German Ideology”.
Thank you for this article, hope you have a nice break.
Dear Rev
Vintage analysis, the best you have written , I
disagree with many of your views , but respect your respect of democracy and fair play . your patience , neve r more evident in last few days , when many of your loyal readership , struggle to understand the D’hondt system and what PR democracy means .
“The Sun (both editions) also has a deeply hostile attitude towards benefits recipients, but once again that’s something it has in common both with most other newspapers (including the supposedly left-wing Mirror, which is as happy as anyone else to run stories about “scroungers”) and the general public, particularly the working class.
“Support for welfare spending on the poor has consistently declined over the past three decades, with this decline in support being particularly pronounced amongst Labour Party supporters, and the young (that is, those aged 18-34).”
In a nutshell , yet due to the preponderance of the “far left ” on the “yes ” campaign , every argument revolved round “no more Tories , Bedroom Tax , Food banks ”
Which went down well in the hardened areas of economic deprivation (Glasgow and Dundee ) where increased benefit spending will suit them fine .
Yet in any other area of Scotland the fear of being stuck in a country where “Cant work wont work ” is rewarded .
That was the “fear ” many “No” voters had , the feeling that Scotland was stepping back to the 1970’s , where Trade Unions ruled unbridled .
When you are a self employed courier driver in Bathgate ,paying a mortgage , you don’t have much sympathy for your neighbors , on full time benefits , they have made a lifestyle choice .
Its from the self employed , the one who choose to work , as best they can (average take home 11k a year in Scotland )
Thats where the Tory vote is coming from .
OT
Taking a break? Take it in Scotland!
Hostels ain’t what they used to be, they’re far better. The Independents usually provide free wifi and tee and coffee, even hot chocolate in some. The bigger the dorm the cheaper it is. A YHA membership card is valid in Scotland and vice versa with the SYHA. Saves you £3 a night, for an SYHA year card for £15 now. The SYHA have now finally moved to free wifi, but you need your own milk, and mostly your own tea and coffee. They’ve cut down on beds in dorms to make them more roomy, and the dreaded bed sleeping-bag is a thing of the past. A lot probably all SYHA can provide frozen meals if you’re lazy.
Most hostels / bunkhouses even provide two pillows as standard rather than having to ask for a second one, and most have upgraded their pillows from the totally flattened things they used to have. This time of year there’s plenty space during the week as long as avoiding bank holidays.
Camp-sites are suffering the last 2 or 3 years, too wet and cold. But that means there’s always spaces, and many now have pods or hobbits, or lodges. I don’t use B&Bs, too expensive and last I tried they still want to keep this ridiculous single supplement going – and some prefer an empty room to a negotiated cheaper price. Can be worth phoning though. But some hotels you can get amazing deals if you talk to the manager, even some of the fancy ones. Depends if they have tour buses in.
Oh, this time of year it’s worth trying for a static for one night, can cost between £20 and £30, and you can have it all for yourself.
That was tourist information from therealvisitscotland.
Jim Sillars promoting the relaunch of the YES campaign in the summer.
Extolling the % of the vote to SNP and refuting Ruthie’s claim that independence is on the back burner.
Funny old world init!
Can’t post archive link as on my tablet. Baby sitting not in my own house.
In both Glasgow Southside and Glasgow Pollock the turnout was less than 50%, and both seats were won by high profile SNP politicians: Nicola and Humza, respetively.
I’m happy we did well in those two seats. Got the lion’s share of the vote in both seats. But, there’s clearly loads of folks not voting there, and as one who lives in thon area, it’s about as working class an area as it gets. My point is, and i could be wrong, but, you’d think there were thousands of possible votes out there for Rise and Solidarity.
If they’re speaking for the working class, the disaffected, well there’s plenty of both in Govan, Ibrox, Govanhill etc…maybe the Rise activists and high heid yins were barking up the wrong trees or singing the wrong songs in the wrong places. Maybe they didn’t have that Barton Fink Feeling. Or mibbe they did and that was the problem. Beware the smell of fish.
All well and good having a collumn in The National, but who reads The National? No many folks on the 14th floor would be my guesss. Nobody from Rise chapped my door. I’m not smart enough to know what’s better or best, trying to change the minds of someone who is going to vote (SNP), or trying to get the vote of someone who intends to ‘gie it a miss’. One group is a damn sight bigger than the other though.
At some point, if we’re to set this country free, we’ll have to sing from the same hymn sheet, not the whole hymnary of course, but the sermon must have some consensus.
Great piece, and I agree 100%.
This needed saying from my point of view too, and this piece sets it out logically.
As someone who hates the Sun and Record, I shrugged at Nicola holding it, knowing it was an act of pragmatism, something those who profess to want Indy, cant grasp.
That picture was used as a stick to beat SNP supporters, by the fringe groups, and the No contingent.
Out on social media, the fringe groups were frequently on the same side as No voters, but they couldn’t see they were useful tools.
Now I’m reading on some of these sites that we have a minority gov’t due to SNPx2.
The stupidity never stops, and it is wearing.
@Fred and others including me
I’m actually wondering whether we should unite at all. After all for the Devolution campaign the only thing Labour, LibDems, SNP, Greens and others had in common was wanting Devolution.
Perhaps friendly enmity isn’t a bad thing?
I nearly didn’t read the article because of the headline
‘The separation of goals’ I thought it might be about football!
However I did read it and found it interesting.
What I have been wondering about for the last couple of days is if it is necessary for there to be only one YES movement. Any reason why there couldn’t be separate YES movements.
I wonder if the Better Together parties will join together again in IndyRef2 or will Gordon Brown’s idea of having a separate movement be more popular this time around?
Have a good break Stu. Enjoy!
Smacznego!
Bon appetit!
Bon appetito!
¡Que aproveche!
chia?h khì!
Please wake me up when we get another chance for indyref 2. I need to get on with my life 🙂 peace, love & light
The Sun is a truly awful paper, run by awful people, actually its hard to find a decent paper with “open” features and essays. I was disappointed to see our great and good being pictured with it. I would like to think the electorate would see past this. The total vote for yes in last weeks election might be perceived as having only nudged the cause of yes on by a couple of points. There is still much to do!
@HandandShrimp
would like to have seen Malcolm Chisholm of the UK Labour party in Scotland as Presiding officer,
but i think he seen/saw the annihilation of the UK Labour party in Scotland coming and got out of dodge asap,
Jenny Marra seems to be a well liked politician by all the members,and does not seem to do much in the parliament so gee her the job.
Well said Stuart!
Well lets hope that’s a lesson learned, Radical Left please keep your mouth shut until Indy is achieved.
I don’t know how many times I tweeted to them they will hurt the cause splitting the vote.
It tells me they are not up for Indy the way the rest of us are or they wouldn’t even think about hurting the cause by splitting the vote, so please radical left, shut the fuck up until Indy has been achieved.
The people I know who belong to RISE are really nice people. Perhaps a bit over optimistic about what they are likely to achieve and misguided about how to achieve their aims.
Thankfully, they are few in number and therefore are unlikely to delay or damage the cause of independence.
IMHO, rigid adherance to ideology, is essentially the denial of reality.
link to zbi.ee
@call me dave
I wish Sillars would go the whole hog and join RISE full time. Some of what he says is good, but shouldn’t come as being reported from an SNP anything.
@ CameronB You do jest about the Particulate being the Rev. The Rev will be fitting Saloon doors on this site, you had better watch oot .lol
@ Paula Rose yes Ms Rose I am aware of your version’s of Heeling, but you,ll no be getting me doon yer dungeon, the Chaise Longue will do me nicely , one half sugar in ma coffee please & dispence wie the saucer.
Fact is, there isn’t an SNP policy I disagree with:
NHI; bus passes; no tuition fees; nursery hours extension: support for small businesses; renewable energy development; purchase of Prestwick airport; European Union; NATO; anti-Trident.I consider the SNP leadership to be pragmatic, and not driven by dogma.
Enjoy your break Rev. I’m for the Yes campaign “revving up” this summer. There’s work to be done.
Sorry O/T What’s happened to Lesley-Anne? She’s gone very quiet.
I thought in the run up to the election she was busy out doing her bit, so didn’t think too much of it. I know she will be inconsolable at wee fluffy getting into Holyrood, but where are you L-A? I really hope that you are okay.
@ HandandShrimp says at 1:30 pm ….”I see Johann and Ken McIntosh are being suggested for presiding officer. Not two names I thought would be put forward.”
Aw Naw. Don’t tell me that we’re going to have to suffer having Lamont at the forefront of embarrassing Scotland for another 4 years or so. On the otherhand that’ll probably result in another few thousand Labourites joining the Independence movement.
………………………………………………….
@ yesindyref2 says at 2:00 pm …. ”Taking a break? Take it in Scotland!
”Hostels ain’t what they used to be, they’re far better. The Independents usually provide free wifi and tee and coffee, even hot chocolate in some. The bigger the dorm the cheaper it is. A YHA membership card is valid in Scotland and vice versa with the SYHA. Saves you £3 a night, for an SYHA year card for £15 now. The SYHA have now finally moved to free wifi, but you need your own milk, and mostly your own tea and coffee. They’ve cut down on beds in dorms to make them more roomy, and the dreaded bed sleeping-bag is a thing of the past. A lot probably all SYHA can provide frozen meals if you’re lazy.
Most hostels / bunkhouses even provide two pillows as standard rather than having to ask for a second one, and most have upgraded their pillows from the totally flattened things they used to have. This time of year there’s plenty space during the week as long as avoiding bank holidays.
Camp-sites are suffering the last 2 or 3 years, too wet and cold. But that means there’s always spaces, and many now have pods or hobbits, or lodges. I don’t use B&Bs, too expensive and last I tried they still want to keep this ridiculous single supplement going – and some prefer an empty room to a negotiated cheaper price. Can be worth phoning though. But some hotels you can get amazing deals if you talk to the manager, even some of the fancy ones. Depends if they have tour buses in. Oh, this time of year it’s worth trying for a static for one night, can cost between £20 and £30, and you can have it all for yourself. That was tourist information from therealvisitscotland.”
GREAT piece of advertising … promoting Scotland …. yesindyref2 …. but I was thinking more along the lines of us fundraising to sent Stu on a first class World cruise whereby they provide tea and coffee and a second plump pillow. It’s his choice right enough, lol.
@Marie I was thinking the same thing over the weekend. I hope she is okay too. 🙂
Pop your head in and say hello Lesley-Anne.
@ Ruby
As an ex-employee of Glasgow University and the parent of an Edinburgh graduate, I don’t think the two can be compared like that.
I haven’t been able to find figures, but my feeling is that the number of rUK students is vastly higher at Edinburgh. Glasgow students are far more likely to “live at home” (not necessarily in Glasgow) and commute.
Although both are highly regarded, Edinburgh still has snob-value (though not as much as St Andrews) and I’ve certainly encountered plenty of Hooray Henrys – maybe they are just louder and more conspicuous. The West End of Glasgow is no longer fertile ground for Tories (though it was the last Tory Westminster seat in the city to fall, in 1982) – dare I say that it is trendy lefty? Patrick Harvie came second with a far higher percentage of the vote than Alison Johnstone.
(I’m disappointed that I can’t find details, because I could be quite wrong.)
@Christian Schmidt
“But let’s just assumed the Greens did take votes from the SNP, let’s do some number crunching. Say the Green would have got the customary 4%, and the SNP list vote would not have fallen, would there any more SNP MSPs? Any more independence-supporting MSPs?”
———–
Christian – The Tories have pretty much stated they don’t accept Green votes as a mandate for another referendum. So it wouldn’t have mattered if there were another 10 of them. They didn’t have strong enough support for independence in their manifesto, and we all know it isn’t their main reason to exist.
Around half their vote would have been SNP supporters fooled into voting tactically. The real problem with the RISE/GREEN tactical voting agenda wasn’t the numbers they took off the SNP. It was the widespread feeling of complacency – helped by both old and new media, spreading the news that SNP seats were safe because of 50% polling figures.
That was obviously bullshit.
These figures were NATION-WIDE and didn’t account for lower support for the SNP in many areas, especially rural and wealthy areas.
Some of the Edinburgh seats for example were three-way splits where the SNP vote was only in the 30’s. Only previously won because the Tory/Lab/Lib-Dem was split.
As soon as the election became ALL about the constitution and a second referendum, all these seats were vulnerable to unionist tactical voting.
It’s true that the SNP vote went up compared to 2011, but it didn’t reach the levels seen at last years general election. 450,000 SNP voters stayed at home, partly due to voters falling off the electoral register, but no doubt also due to a feeling of complacency that it was in the bag.
The SNP certainly did everything they could to stop the complacency, that’s for sure. Hopefully lessons will be learnt.
o/t the work and pensions minister right now is defending food banks i wonder if ruth the mooth will support this Tory policy of making food banks a permanent fixture and take it to its logical conclusion and privatise them with the logo food banks r/us , what an opportunity such vision and enterprise .
Big Jock
The majority was lost because half the left wing yes voters didnae get aff their backsides to vote. Who’s fault is that? I include Dumbarton and North East Fife.
which hotbed of left wing voters in nef are you talking about? cupar, st andrews, pittenweem, falkand???
different constituencies have different demographics
I hear Catalonia is a great place to visit.
I’ve always struggled to hear the soft or shrieking tones of a Scottish accent in the centre of Edinburgh. The well spoken Scots are very discreet. Edinburgh Uni is a great place to go for your middle class English who might not have got into Oxbridge.
And over the last 150 or so years the Royal Buroughs of Marchmont and Morningside have been very welcoming of our upper middle and middle class English cousins and God bless em. Roots have been laid down in Dean Village and Mayfield, Queen Street and Dundas Street and Stockbridge and Comely Bank welcomes comely lads and lassies, who enjoy our Scottish Culture as they toast to the queen or walk to the nearest gallery.
And the locals have found kindred spirits, to and from their banking jobs, or meetings in the deli…Ya or Yes, but never aye, chin chin, toodle pip.
Love both cities, lived in both for several years, but chalk and cheese they are. Until you get halfway down Leith walk or take the pilgrimage to Muirhouse or Niddrie.
Papko. 2.00
‘Its from the self employed , the one who choose to work , as best they can (average take home 11k a year in Scotland )
Thats where the Tory vote is coming from .’
I know several teachers and other public sector workers who hire poorly paid self employed cleaners to clean their houses.
The former vote Labour and the latter Tory.
The obsession with endlessly increasing public sector spending is a bit bogus in my opinion.Where does the money actually go and who are the main beneficiaries ?
crazycat
I was thinking about the mock referendum that was held in Glasgow Uni during the ref. where RUK students voted NO.
I suppose it will depend on where the students halls of residence are.
I know there was one in Park Circus next door to Michelle Mone which she complained about. Not sure if that comes under the Kelvin constituency or not.
There seems to be student accomodation opening up all the place in central Edinburgh. They look pretty luxurious so I can’t imagine they are cheap. There are two new ones in Holyrood Road and another in Calton Road.
@crazycat
@Ruby
With the exception of Dundee all the east coast Unis have more than their share of ‘Yahs’.
Aberdeen, through their Land Economy course attracts a substantial amount of Landowners’ offspring to manage Daddy’s estate. St Andrews and Edinburgh attract a fair few Oxbridge rejects.
The more rUK students they have then I would agree, the more who vote Tory. I would also agree there are far more at home students in Glasgow than Edinburgh. St Andrews almost doubles in size during term time with incoming students.
I have a son at Edinburgh just now and the place is hoaching with Tories who are quite open about it.
ronnie anderson
I thought that post hadn’t gotten through. 🙂
The latest Brexit poll of the whole UK on the 11th May is 45% leave and 44% stay. Not sure where the other 1% went! If we take out the Scottish sample which is a guess of say 2% in favour of stay. Leave may have a 3 or 4% lead here for RUK only.
In any case I think we are looking at a narrow stay or leave result by 3% or less. Scotland is looking to vote 64% stay with 10% of voters.
So we can hold England to the EU against it’s will. They may demand a referendum on the UK, who knows how they will react. The other scenario is they RUK leave and we vote stay. It’s going to lead to a referendum for us. Either way no side is going to soar ahead, so one of these two scenarios look like happening. Is Cameron going to break up the UK. Will it be his legacy.
Stu,get yourself down the Somerset beach for a week or longer,
deck chair ,sannies,coolbox full of fruit ciders,music and a couple of trashy books (harry potter?),
stay away from twitter,blogs,newspapers,football pish,and anyone with an interest in politics,
and then back to plan on expanding Wings (more/any staff advertising, not just politics take on the Establishment at its core and expose the real power in UK/Scotland,
hope the sun shines anywhere you go.
@ CameronB Ha Ha it did & he,s goat ah downer on critics the noo bit ah widnae clipe on ye lol.
Severin Carrell of rancid The Graun was sweaty and shifty yesterday chatting SNP bad with sweaty and shifty Gordon Brewer but it did seem to be the start of an all new and exciting Britnat vote UKOK or else Guardian campaign too
I lie. Its not. Same shit different phoney lefty SNP bad day at the Graun.
JK Rowling is not amused. Its all for your own good, silly little scotland region.
link to archive.is
McGarry withdrew from the SNP whip last November after revelations linking her to an allegation that tens of thousands of pounds in donations may be missing from Women for Independence, the campaign group she helped found. She denies any wrongdoing and the police investigation is continuing.
In January, McGarry prompted another Twitter controversy after she accused JK Rowling of bullying, causing the Harry Potter author to threaten legal proceedings.”
@Petra OT
That was of course aimed at those with a smaller budget, and on their / our own. Sounds like I’m knocking B&Bs, but they are of very qood quailty, and the last couple of years there’s been vacancies even in the likes of Fort William in the mad fortnight at 6 in the evening as I’m driving through, which makes it easier for casual touring such as the continentals like to do.
Scotland is open for business, come all ye!
MJT – Central Edinburgh is not cosmopolitan as some like to describe it (Not You).
It’s actually become less cosmopolitan, as it is overun with Ya Ya’s like JK Rowling etc. The real Edinburgh folk are too polite to say, but it must drive them nuts that their city is now like Welyn Garden rather than Princes Gardens.
The English abroad tend to take their country with them, even more so when they think Edinburgh is part of Greater London. They want all the benefits of living here cheaper mansions, better NHS, free Education and free prescriptions. But ask them to vote for Scotland and they thump you with a Union Jack.
Yea, well fuck normal people then. Who wants to share a country with them anyway?
Great article Stu and needed saying.
Have a great break and come back refreshed and raring to go.
I’ll miss you!
O/T
The Rev taking a wee bit of time out. As I don’t have a spare bedroom, and therefore can’t be accused of having my own agenda, I’ll swallow what many here are thinking and start a wee conversation – I’m sure there are good Wingers who’d love to have a house guest for a couple days, allowing said guest access to wifi and some freedom to explore their local attractions. Then an evening, shipping a wee dram, maybe a fireside, putting the world to rights.
Think about it Stuart, a wee break, amongst like-hearted should would also shore up spirits that might need it. A spring-cleaning of the soul.
I invite offers from Wingers – why should the Rev recharge himself in your own location? Fait vos jeux.
(Stands back from the blue touch-paper)
@ Ruby
I’ve lost track of the constituency boundaries in Glasgow now that I don’t live there – they keep changing them too!
A few years ago I watched fancy new halls being built at the edge of the Meadows, which will be near the boundary between South and Central; the flat in Buccleuch Street I used to visit was definitely in Central (Holyrood), but parts of the Meadows are in South for Westminster.
I had a lengthy argument at a Yes stall in the Meadows with 2 English students, who admitted they would go back south after graduating, but who were No because they wanted Labour to still be able to win at Westminster. In vain did I point out the statistics about not needing Scottish votes for that.
They were also adamant that there would be no Brexit (a referendum was just a political football at that time). Despite being Labour, they were extremely posh. Fortunately(?), so am I, so we could speak the same language – but I didn’t convince them.
Ediburgh Central voted SNP in 2011
Marco Biagi was the MSP
prior to that it was Sarah Boyack.
Do you think the Referendum has changed things vis a vis how say RUK students would vote?
Perhaps prior to the IndyRef they didn’t bother to vote.
Did JK Rowling vote for Ruth?????
What I really like is people who have to say “FACT: assertion”. It’s great, and very handy. You always know it’s unlikely to actually be a FACT, but an opinion. Putting “FACT:” actually weakens the argument.
Here’s one I have ready for the mathematically minded.
“FACT: 8 + 8 = 16. Always.”
Well, no actually, in the hexidecimal system 8 + 8 = 10. And in the octal system it’s not a valid sum as there is no number “8”.
“FACT: 8 + 8 = 16 in the decimal system”. Probably true 🙂
EUAN MCCOLM:
Scottish Labour’s best – perhaps its only – chance of survival is to be ready to capitalise on an SNP slump that might never come.
But if the party dies waiting for it, we shouldn’t be surprised.
link to archive.is
There was a J. McTernan article too but it’s gone now… 🙁
Basically labour made three mistakes…four if you count them not listening to him 🙂
————————————————————-
THE SNP will not push for one of its MSPs to become the next Presiding Officer – as the party still hopes to achieve an overall majority at Holyrood in the coming parliament.
link to archive.is
Herald Poll on indy ref2 Was at 3+:1 for Aye bring it on!
Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m sure you will!) but it seems to me that the SNP did a good job at getting their vote out but the Tories did better. I think that happened because they were able to get people who normally don’t vote in Scottish elections to vote in this one. How? By scaring the bejesus out of people that this was like another Indy referendum. Look at their election materials – the union is under threat, got to stop the SNP, no more referendums…on and on it went. These are the same people who turned out to defeat us in indyref1, no voters. And not just Tories but no voters in general. That’s why they didn’t mention that they were Tories on their literature. Not just to avoid the toxic brand but also to appeal to ALL no voters. A pretty smart if desparate strategy. Most Tories don’t give a flying f**k about the Scottish parliament. They see it as an irrelevance, a mickey mouse parliament. They look south to their Mecca at Westminster so they don’t normally vote in Scottish GEs. But they came out for this phoney indyref2.
Ah…but the law of unintended consequences applies here I think. The Tories are still deeply unpopular AND they are the government in London. The SNP is now in the most enviable position of being at once a party of government while simultaneously a party of opposition! They’re going to have lots of fun with that. They’ve almost got a majority for virtually all their policies including another referendum – the Greens must support that and I can’t very well see how they can avoid it. But at the same time they can chose not to implement some things and blame it on their lack of a majority. So, Scotland gets another 5 years of competent government and quite possibly another 5 after that.The SNP can pursue their goal of persuading more people to support independence, with our help of course, and call the referendum at the most opportune time. This situation takes the pressure off the SNP to call a referendum before we’re ready.
Meanwhile, the Tories will continue to bang on about referendums and the constitution north and south of the border which are the SNP’s specialist subjects. AND we get to watch, from a relatively safe distance, the self immolation of both the Tory (post EU ref) and Labour parties in Westminster.
Truly,the SNP must be the most jammy political party in the history of world jamminess!
There should be a residential qualificatiion put on any Referendum 2/3 years. Although there will be more Scottish students at University now they can get full grant funding. Less money should be put into educating students from elsewhere. Who still don’t pay the full cost. Universities are awash with cash. So much money they don’t know what to do with, according to people who work in University. Glass libraries etc. When more funding is needed at first start level. Nursery/primary and College, and for additional needs. Getting done class sizes/extra help and adequate training in additional needs.
Superb stuff Rev. Needed saying.
The vote came out in the same proportion as the Referendum. There is a difference at a Referendum. People who support no political Party come out to vote. 55% turnout GE. 85% Referendum. Totally different voting system The Unionist vote stagnated. The independence vote increased.
Great read.
I’m a bit hung up on Edinburgh Central I’ll probably have to cool it as I might end up kicking the RUK students (by accident – Oh sorry!) when I see them in the supermarket.
Ruth only go 610 more votes in Edinburgh Central than the SNP. The Greens got 4644 votes so I’ll just content myself by thinking that all the students in Edinburgh Central voted Green. Ach bless!
Pro-Indy parties achieved 53% of the seats with 49.4% of the vote.
And we’re complaining?
Your article actually made me laugh and I found it quite bizarre in a humorous type of way. Firstly is there only 220,000 normal people? In fact a minority of people buy the sun, a majority no longer or never have bought a newspaper. The last poll I saw showed that support for the monarch hybrid in Scotland is at 50 percent by no means decisive.
Whilst you make a lot of fair points some of them as pointed out are bizarre. The comment by Sean O’connor is obviously bang out of order but does not reflect the left and in fact I would say solidarity have been very supportive of the SNP and the criticisms made have been reasonable and constructive in fact I and many other solidarity members only voted snp with the first vote because Tommy Sheridan persuaded us to. I agree the left has been demolished at this election to but I believe a lot of traditionally self confessed socialists probably voted snp both votes because they see snp as the vehicle for change so I would not day the left is dead as much as you may wish it.
However, overall I usually agree with your posts but this left yes spat business is a bit tiring although I understand your need to respond. I just wonder if you could do more yourself to build bridges? I mean it seemed a lot like a defence of the sun and it is a pretty horrendous paper of a horrendous media as you pointed out and none of them deserve defending. The sun will drop the SNP like a hat as soon as it suits them and I doubt it makes any difference their support. Before the election of Alex salmond as first minister their paper said if you vote SNP u might as well put Scotland head on a noose. This paper can not be trusted.
Absolutely spot on, Rev, and you articulate my thoughts almost exactly.
The problem with the ‘radical’ left, as always, is its petty elitism and its more-radical-than-thou manner. As you say, independence is tantalisingly within reach yet all they can do is squabble about ideological purity. It’s as though they can’t deal with the prospect of success and must pursue their traditional failure at all costs.
But at least they won’t have sold out!
Yes Ken, the Indy vote was up. We’re making progress. The Tories have shot their bolt and now they are in a much worse position than they were before. It’s scorched earth/bridge burning tactics. We have a unionist/nationalist parliament. Every issue will be seen through that prism. Every election ( council elections, by-elections, national elections) will be mini referendums for the forseeable future. It’s the new normal.
@Ruby
I feel the same way about Dumbarton. I’m looking at people in the street…
I think where anti SNP sentiment was strongest, they treated the election like a UK General election and people who did not usually vote in Scottish elections were mobilised.
I don’t think there are any more Tories or Lib Dems than before, they just were more motivated to vote perhaps due to the polarising of Unionism vs Nationalism.
I live in the blue belt at the bottom of Scotland. It is a rural area where a lot of folk from South of the border have moved into due to low house prices and better public services etc.
Some thoughts on why this area voted Tory:
1) Like many rural areas our Broadband is very poor or non existent. We therefore do not have easy access to Wings etc and many still rely on the MSM for their news.
2) Our TV is Border TV produced in England. We are not part of mainstream STV. This imho is a huge influence on the way this part of Scotland sees itself.
3) The SNP have neglected this part of Scotland, little investment apart from new Dumfries Hospital and Dalbeattie school and our transport infrastructure has not improved during the last 9 years and we rarely see any SNP initiatives down here.
4) Richard Lockhead has upset the farming folk and therefore all linked workers and trades by delaying the EU payments. I think farmers must register online to the new system but this is difficult without access to the internet.
5) The first call centre closed in the centralisation of the Police was the one in Dumfries. The closure of this local call centre is still a very sore point in this area and continues to be a major SNPBad on doorsteps.
Papko
I think you’ll find the majority of benefits are “In Work” benefits.
Btw, I was also a self-employed employer.
Excellent and thought provoking as usual. Précised version woiuld be “Scottish Electorate are not the politically engaged Social Democrats they claim to be to salve their consciences but in essence are content to let the neo-liberals get on with it as long as it’s the family from the next Estate living in B&B and using Food-Banks”.
Supported Indy first and get the levers to improve things for a long time but I’m in my 70s now with older grandchildren struggling, so the idea of using the levers we have or even forcing more to ‘greenly & sustainably’develop our way out of austerity is quite attractive.
It was only low number of voters who appeared to changed their second SNP vote. 105,316 out of a million+ Conned by the fraudster pollsters and MSM. However enough to make a significant different.
It appears SNP voters gave their second vote away but it appears no other voters gave their second vote to the SNP.
It will be interesting to see other Parties being held to account. On their ‘promises’.
@ 55% turnout at the Holyrood Election with a totally different electoral system. That is up from 40% at a HE.
What the Rev said.
Noo away and get yourself a bloody guid break in the sun, Stu. My god you deserve it, man.
Re-charge the batteries. We’ve five years of pish to filter.
ScottishPsyche
You’ve got Jackie I’ve got Ruth. 🙁
I think we should both go out and treat ourselves to something nice.
I might have fillet steak for dinner. I haven’t had clams for a long time I might have them too. Strawberries are nice at the moment I’ll cover them in chocolate & wash them down with a nice glass of champagne.
Emmmmm! I feel better already! 😉
Every time you look, it gets UKOK weirder out. Rancid The Graun wants ref 2, now!
link to archive.is
English nats at the Graun are a crazy UKOK breed. Having UKOK raged at us, “you lost, shut up, move on, SNP bad, Kez is a goddess,” for last say 18 months, they’ve flip into demand ref 2 now, flop.
If the all new and exciting Dugdale led SLabour are on the way back, BetterTogethering it with the tory party again might not work, after the last time, barely 18 months ago.
“Support the independence of the Guardian and our award-winning journalism £49 /year?”
No thanks:D
@John Young
I was thinking the same as I was driving through election day last week. The SNP Government need to make the whole borders area more included in Scotland. There was the Borders Railway which was a good initiative, but the planned upgrade to the A75 for instance can’t happen soon enough – and more.
I think it’s a similar story for Orkney and Shetland. They were left stranded with the Northlink Ferries fiasco, whereas if one of the Calmac fleet breaks down as oft occurred the last 2 / 3 years, ferries are shuffled around and do the job – even if people do grumble. RET is a great thing, on all west coast ferry crossings bar the council ones which now work out relatively expensive, but nothing said about Orkney and Shetland yet. The LibDems played that one – rightly – to the hilt.
And the A9 north of Inverness, improved a bit but still slow and dangerous in places. Not even on the plan yet as far as I’m aware, just the dualling up to Inverness. Some see the SNP as Central Belt concentrating. I can see why.
Re. student accommodation in Edinburgh. There are also two Edinburgh Uni halls going up in Buccleuch Street.
IMHO, Edinburgh Uni. exerts far to much influence within Edinburgh. It is a private company, after all.
I am not against development or ‘foreigners’ but I think these halls have the potential to adversely change the local characteristics and functionality of these locations.
Transient inhabitants do not constitute a sustainable and robust local community. Commercial power trumps the little guy again, I’m afraid.
Ruby.
Believe me Gin was the only answer on May 5th/6th (nice flavoury Gin from Scotland though)!
Hi Rev, Bit of a correction for you wrt “Top Gear” it actually got less viewers in Scotland than countryfile. I know you are not in touch with what men in Scotland want due to your female credentials and location in England but that is just the way it is. Tongue firmly in cheek, I await brickbats and hammers.
One more rancid The Graun total miss hit, its all Jeremy Corbyn’s fault you see
link to archive.is
Dr Rawnsley leaves out the only actual real opposition in his Scotland region, the tory led BBC media attack propaganda machine, as usual.
Does anyone else get really bad déjà vu reading London based politico wafflers like rancid The Grauns?
“Labour has crashed to its worst result in Scotland since 1910.
It has been supplanted by a resurgent Scottish Conservative party successfully bidding for the support of centrist, pro-union voters.
The Tories, not Labour, will now be the principal party of opposition, a role given additional importance because the SNP just fell short of securing a majority.
If there is a way back for Labour in Scotland, the evidence of these elections is that the route recommended by Mr Corbyn is not it.”
Its up to all the lovely BBC style Crichton Torquilesque propagandists now.
Cheers Rev. Clear and insightful. It’s fair to say that as time’s gone on over the last five years of the pre and post Indyref debate, my personal politics have been on a journey leftward. I’d be well and truly happy for Scotland to become a republic with a socialist flavour. However, I recognise that this is a debate for the post independence era and find it immensely frustrating that so many ‘radical left’ get so mired up in competitive Puritanism that they lose sight of the immediate goal. I was frankly suspicious of RISE from the very beginning and am quite amenable to the donning of aluminium headgear when discussing them.
That said, I do find the Sun an utterly despicable rag but as you state, it only takes a perusal of the Mail, Express or even the alleged ‘Quality’ Telegraph FFS, to see there’s little between any of them today.
Whilst I’d like to see the Greens and whatever remains of Labour do the right thing andback Indy (whether that smug wee shite Greer will is a matter for debate), It’s clear to me that the SNP is the only reliable vehicle for the delivery of independence Also, living just on the ‘dark side of the Solway’ 😉 I agree utterly with John Young on why the South has gone Tory. It’s time the SG started making friends in the south. It’s a place I want to move to in due course but right now the infrastructure is shite and nothing but Brit propaganda is pumped into its living rooms.
I think the SNP needs to make the kind of efforts in D&G over the next five years that it has done to win over the former SLAB heartlands.
It’s a big ask but I feel it’s worth the effort and could be the difference between majority and minority in 2021.
@ In a mainly SNP area. The only thing that was raised was potholes and bus service.
yesindyref2 at 4.30pm. Agree that a major South of Scotland initiative is needed by the SNP. Perhaps something similar to the old Highlands and Islands Development Board.
This is a poor area where many locals struggle. There are no cities which seem to have money thrown at them. I thought the initiative by one of the SNP candidates to try to obtain City Status for Dumfries was an excellent initiative.
You are correct when you say many folk down here consider the SNP as a Central Belt Party.
I have ZERO doubt that the youth fuckwits from RISE are exactly the same breed as SLAB.
Look at the “journey” Darling et al took on their route from “solidarity comrade!” to ermine vermin.
Youthful naivety is common but anyone studying politics (or PPE) at uni is not naive. These scumbags are just following the same route all their erstwhile buddies in SLAB took – power, money & self-serving interests.
Admittedly Williamson is a special breed of idiot but thats not unusual if you look at SLAB over the last 30 years.
Remember the names because if the independence journey comes to a successful conclusion these fucktards will be spinning how much they did/believed in Scotland. Remember the names.
@ Countryfile doesn’t get much viewers.
@Onwards (2.44) says
Around half their (the Greens) vote would have been SNP supporters fooled into voting tactically.
Got any figures to back that up? I would think that half the Green vote would be people leaving SLab and the LibDems and looking for something leftish to vote for.
I agree that Students on a 4 year degree from the South or elsewhere, should not be able to determine the future of the country we live in.
This is madness!
I’m up to two folk today who have asked me how the election went and who won
Actually the second one was a party of four older folk out on their deck chairs taking in the sunshine
When I replied that the SNP had won by a mile they Grumphed and went quiet while one of them said “I thought it wiz that wee lesbian lassie thit wun”
I replied “NO” and went to the shops
Ken – Countryfile is a joke. Scotland makes up 1/3 of the UK landmass. Yet they spend 5% of the entire year visiting Scotland if we are lucky!
@Ruby 4:07
you have my deepest sympathy, it must be depressing to live in a Tory constituency! I live next to one and thats bad enough, I have to pass through it.
Feels like Ive gone back to the 80’s.
Rev Stu,
This is an excellent piece of writing. It nails the utter garbage that has been coming from the far left, especially recently. I bet lots of them have SKY telly – that doesn’t seem to bother them, what with it being Murdoch an all.
Anyway, have a holiday, but be careful where you go, I can just see the Daily Mail lurid headline,
‘Vile scotch separatist blogger Stuart Campbell goes on holiday…IN ENGLAND!!!!!’
Looks like we have a few more years of tosh to survive, but as the tortoise said to the hare, ‘slow and steady wins the race’.
Quite excellent article,
Rev Campbell.
It is BECAUSE the SNP is,
itself, so democratic,
that the Left are an echo-chamber
of frustration.
A period of silence sounds great….
….. …..
They, the Left and the Greens, should
look to post indy solutions.
We, from the ‘through the middle
political reality parties.
Or indeed those from none,
Keep one eye on the Tories
in all shapes and forms.
And one eye on the prize.
I’ll meet the Left when it is most effective.
That will be after independence.
As emphasised by others, there will always be colonial snipers and sneer merchants who think Scotland a small fragile province, and those who think we should be kept down and poor, even after self-governance reinstalled. That’s how they battered Scotland into going it alone on the Damien Scheme. They aim to do the same again.
For the moment you can only satirise them, or bat them away, for they keep saying the same thing over and over again every time they raise their heads above the parapet. The educated magazine editors are no different from the chronically narcissistic screaming trolls.
Here’s something to ponder:link to wp.me
O/T today I got HM Govt guide to why we’re all DOOMED if we leave the EU. War, pestilence, famine etc. I am voting Remain but if I was Leave I’d be fkin raging.
Excellent article Rev.
I am indifferent about the tabloids as i live my life without them if at all possible. However you make some excellent points that needed to be spelled out. I totally agree at your despair at the what seems like the easy manipulation of certain Yes voters by the MSM. It’s one thing for the less politicised general public to be played by the media into thinking the SNP are a radical left wing socialist party but politically active Yes voters or SNP supporters should know better. For the past 20 or 30 years they have evolved into being a social democratic party on the Northern European model. No overtly radical but quietly so in the British political landscape because they have ideals and yet they do not consider pragmatism a dirty word. Not being stuck in the tired old left , right argument has given the SNP a huge advantage over their rivals as they can plough a middle furrow deciding on policies on their merits “for Scotland” , not for what is best for any particular narrow power base or some outdated and failed ideology weather it is the idiocy of tory monetarism or the splitters of radical socialism.
Well done and have a great break ,and come back refreshed Rev. !!
I see that Toothy Moothy Roothy who ”wants a Parliament with teeth” ha ha! isn’t getting all her own way. They’ve started squabbling amongst themselves already with the Lib-dems and Labour knocking back her call for ”all opposition parties to unite in finding a common cause against the SNP.” Seems that the betterment of Scotland isn’t top of the Tory agenda at all and smacks of the despicable playground behaviour known as ‘ganging up’.
I don’t think she’s got the message yet that everyone knows that her party has critically damaged both the Lib-dems (through the coalition) and Labour (since Indyref) and that they’ll regard her and her Party as being pretty toxic (more toxic than the SNP?): Even more so the Unions and Labour supporters. Meaning that them showing any support for her will alienate thousands more of their supporters. And eh, Labour would have to be plain daft, totally masochistic or suffering from a form of mass psychosis if they continued to pally-wally along with her. In saying that maybe Labour are still intent on continuing on their kamikaze course. Time will tell.
Wee bully-boy Davidson another dictator in the making and to my mind her coming second with her, and her Westminster cronies (bosses), policies / behaviour being under the spotlight now is the best thing that could have happened for us.
link to heraldscotland.com
As said above we need to ensure those voting in Scotland live here. Further the need to be registered to pay tax here.
After the referendum and the survey reported on in the Daily Record I became a tad cautious about any poll carried out only in Scotland. I suspect there’s a fair few postal votes going about.
If the polls put the SNP over 50% take it with a massive pinch of salt. Same goes for the Greens.
I know this is O/T, but when do the ‘perks’ from the fundraiser get sent out?
John McTernan is a a political strategist and was Chief of Staff to Jim Murphy….
Aye right! Shurley schome mishtake 🙂
link to archive.is
It is not normal for protest parties
to have nearly all their potential
voters covered by such a large
singular alternative struggle.
It is unfortunate for all other
protest parties.
I do believe that the natural
order was stolen from Scotland
centuries ago. Depriving us of
much talent, and much progressive
dialogue.
The people are clever, delivering 14? years to the Nations cause.
Only independence can allow us to
restore a balance to our whole
fair-minded society.
A nation state, once again.
Being polite about I think he is talking through a hole in his arse. Williamson that is.
To blame a Sun Front Page for the loss of a theoretical majority from happening is just crass. I now find all of the British Press and Media loathsome in equal measure. I include the SH and the National in that and they both gave RISE etc more than a fair crack of the whip.
It also lets the SNP off the hook from a policy point of view. But hey they could have had a different set of policies and just maybe more folk would have voted on the day for them but it is all speculation. It also doesn’t ask if the SNP election campaign didn’t misfire in some ways.
Did he personally interview every single votes that voted Yes or would vote Yes, I don’t think so, maybe asking those who didn’t vote in the election as to why they didn’t vote would be a more productive use of his time if he can ever remove his head from his arse that is.
I am past caring who I might offend!
Radical socialism probably needs to be imposed! I don’t think any population has ever chosen it democratically.
Labour used to claim to be socialist, and their 1945 government was radical. However, only so far. The monarchy survived, the House of Lords survived, and there was no question of nationalisation of banks, shops or land.
Socialism implies that all means of production are in public/collective ownership.
Throughout Europe railways and electricity are typically state owned. Almost a consensus that this is right. Some public ownership of strategic sectors does not mean socialism.
I would class most socialism as actually social democracy. True socialism to me means almost complete state control.
This never was the objective of any mainstream party. However, there have always been those well out on the left who are undoubted socialists. The thing they have most in common, is that few will vote for them!
Petra @5.09 your link archived:
link to archive.is
Excellent article Rev.
I am indifferent about the tabloids as i live my life without them if at all possible.
However you make some excellent points that needed to be spelled out and youve done it briliantly. I totally agree at your despair at the what seems like the easy manipulation of certain Yes voters by the MSM. It’s one thing for the less politicised general public to be played by the media into thinking the SNP are a radical left wing socialist party but politically active Yes voters or SNP supporters should know better.
For the past 20 or 30 years they have evolved into being a social democratic party on the Northern European model. No overtly radical but quietly so in the British political landscape because they are effective , have ideals and yet they do not consider pragmatism a dirty word.
Not being stuck in the tired old left / right argument has given the SNP a huge advantage over their rivals as they can plough a middle furrow deciding on policies on their merits “for Scotland” not for what is best for any particular narrow power base or some outdated and failed ideology weather it is the idiocy of tory monetarism or the splitters of radical socialism.
Well done and have a great break ,and come back refreshed Rev. !!
Call me dave, here’s McTernan the ‘socialist’ (from Rev’s twitter) telling Ruth Davidson how to beat the SNP, in the Telegraph…he’s certainly putin’ it aboot the day in’t he?
They really are the Red Tories, and he exemplifies them completely.
link to archive.is
I agree with much of the article.
However, I will continue to vilify, ridicule and shout quite loudly against buying the Sun.
It has little to do with Hillsborough for me.
It is personal.
That rag traduced, lied and demonised myself and my fellow fire-fighters as “Baby-Killers” and “murderers” in the 70’s for having the temerity to try to gain a living wage and get our kids off benefits and free school meals.
They did such a hatchet job that an elderly lady who proclaimed herself as having been informed by the Sun, spat right in my face on a picket line. She was not alone….and the common denominator…apart from abject stupidity?
The fucking Sun.
I don’t forget and I don’t forgive.
No matter how popular it is….to me it is a fucking rag that needs to die.
Sort of off topic….but I wanted to make myself clear why I say what I say.
Bed and breakfast! You’re a mercenary bunch. Surely the rev should be able to tour Scotland gratis. There’s a spare room in my hoose any time.
This article alone is worth a free weeks stay with a bottle of malt thrown in.
Mr Williamson is of the opinion that because he believes something for any given reason then so must the general population. Quite narcisstic actually.
@Rab Dickson,
You guys don’t earn enough for the job you do. Firefighting is very dangerous and emotional
work.
Galamcennalath @ 5:15
The radical socialist/ runcible left?
The Khmer Rouge on Mogadon
Re. the Graun. The Scott Trust, which is supposed to ensure the Graun’s impartiality, has been converted to a limited company. The management of the Scott Trust Ltd. is up to it’s neck in HSBC”s role as international hub for financial irregularities. Fraud to you and me governor.
The Graun is only credible to the credulous and though he might talk the business, Sev’s a posing twat, IMHO. 🙂
link to en.wikipedia.org
@ Severin Carroll
How are you getting on with that introduction to semiotics?
From the Herald:
“How would you vote in a second Scottish independence referendum?
Scotland should be an independent country 79%
Scotland should remain part of the Union 21%“
Kevin’s a friend of mine, but he’s obviously been having too much of the wacky baccy.
All of the papers are cr*p, to use one of his politer expressions. Any Party would give up a few broon envelopes to get that backing of the Sun. He may remember many of oor auld comrades in alms pocketing the Rudolph coins for a bit of the old Tommy Knocking.
It was the sometimes Indy supporters on the schizoid North British left that were encouraged to split the 2nd vote by the other nasty meejah hacks.
Remember the 96!
Yes, that definitely needed saying, Stu.
In fact, I reckon it was the far-left rhetoric associated with indy which brought out all these “missing voters” to support the Tories in rural Scotland.
If people are already fearful about as big a change as independence, it doesn’t help to stoke their fears further with careless talk about socialist revolution.
Nail.
Head.
BANG!
@ Almannysbunnet that was rather my point 🙂
@HandandShrimp says: 9 May, 2016 at 1:30 pm:
“I see Johann and Ken McIntosh are being suggested for presiding officer”.
Looks rather like the other members want to shove them somewhere they would be, “oot o the road o the cairts”, as my old grandfather used to put it when he meant that someone needed placed out of harm’s way where they could do no serious damage.
Peter Lilley CON is a director of a private company hired to manage the votes in Scotland, including the Referendum.
“Idox has had a hand in providing count software, including postal vote management support, among other services, for elections since at least 2012.”
link to archive.is
Wings;telling it as it is.
Great article that needed to be written exactly the way it was written.
I agreed with every word.
Thank You Rev.
thanks to all for the link to Mc Torn arses , we’ll difficult to describe advice to action man in the telegraph , lost for words dear oh dear , anyway lets hope the advise is followed and we can sit back and enjoy the show , care in the community ffs , this guy should not be out unsupervised EVER .
Peter Lilley is an arch conservative…that’s interesting Capella, he’s a nasty piece of Tory work.
Just a quick question to anyone who was at the counts, did the postal ballots get mixed in with the polling booth ballots?
Is it just my screen reception missing lots of avatars? Been that way for days.
Anyhow, a passionate plea for common sense from Wings.
Here’s some thoughts on buying a degree: link to wp.me
G4jeepers,
The postal votes are validated separately (signatures cross-checked, etc.) then transferred to the count to be tallied with all the others.
OT
As the international press saw the Election result from a David Leask random sample:
link to archive.is
@yesindyref2
The Borders Railway is a pig in a poke. I don’t know anybody who wants it, and I don’t know anybody who believes it is ever going to pay its way. It’s an obscene amount of money to spend on a white elephant when the A7 is screaming out for an upgrade so you can actually pass an occasional vehicle now and again.
I heard the railway required the construction of 10,000 homes in the Borders before the figures stack up. At the average 2.4 children, that’s an influx of over 44,000 people where the existing population is 110,000, and it seems a bit of a con to embrace such an invasion when all we’re going to get from the deal is a sodding railway nobody is going to use.
Don’t get me started on the quality of construction of those 10,000 new homes. That’s another load of hot air and spiv economics the Borders doesn’t need.
If you want to get the Borders back on its feet, dual what you can of the A7, and send in the FBI to smash the corruption rackets and institutional nepotism which makes the Borders a butterfly killing jar for new business and has stifled economic regeneration for decades apart from the “lucky” few who skim off the cream for themselves. I wouldn’t spit on Scottish Enterprise if they were on fire, nor Scottish Borders Council, and their wider community of “chums”. It is rotten to core. I’d put them all in the dock, but maybe not in any Court anywhere in the Borders if you get my drift. I wasn’t kidding about the FBI.
Yeah. Build a railway right through to Carlise. It will make Hawick’s property market go ballistic as all the pensioners from Carlisle move North for free health care they’d have to pay for at home. That will really get the place back on its feet.
It will be the same old pish, aye, aye, loads of jobs for the locals. Aye, if your dues to the local mafia are up to date.
I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the railway, and don’t kid yourselves the SNP gives a flying fuck about the Borders.
Idox, snippets from that article Capella put up:
‘In a statement to shareholders, the firm said it also successfully provided “the majority of electoral services” for the 2014 Scottish referendum, saying that its systems managed the highest turnout in recent years for a major UK election.’
‘Montreal-based CGI and Idox won the £6.5 million contract to provide an electronic vote counting system for the 2017 local government elections in Scotland.’
“Such suppliers provide services including, for example, the printing of ballot papers and poll cards. All such contracts are awarded by the individual returning officers on the basis of what will provide the best value and quality with the interests of the voter always at the heart of all our activities and contracts.”
‘After one concerned person asked about the use of “Peter Lilley’s firm”, the Scottish Government responded: “The awarding of contracts to Idox, or other commercial companies, was a matter for individual counting officers to decide. The Scottish Government was not involved in this process.”
Yeah…I’m concerned alright.
@Robert J. Sutherland,
Thank you 😀
The second was when Scottish Labour believed the SNP spin that they were a left-wing party and tried to outflank the Nationalists on their left. The consequence was a commitment to raise taxes. This, in the context, of a Scotland in which the largest class are the middle class – the monthly paid, white-collar salariat. And in the face of a working class who have never evinced any interest in paying more tax.”
Why does Torygraph advisor Macternan leave out stuff like why should Scotland pay even more taxes than England for Gordon Brown’s, Alistair Darling’s and George Osborne’s ongoing disastrous toryboy-nomics??
Pump billions into the south east of teamGB for decades and wrack giant debt, thanks to end of boom and buster Crash Gordon, it all goes pop 2008, then toryboy’s austerity for the poor, socialism for the City, Labour Project Fear the life out of YES with their appalling economics, May 2016 swings in with red and blue toryboy world UKOK snivelling, come come Scotland, don’t be so selfish, start paying for SLabour’s all new socialist economic bollocks, you vile separatist ingrates.
Or something like that.
@ K1 – a bit suspicious isn’t it. Seeing film of ranks of staff hand counting ballots suggested the whole process was done by real people. But it looks like hackable computers are used.
People like Lilley are scary. Remember “I’ve got a little list” of benefit scroungers he was going to round up. The Tories will also be getting advice from the ghastly SIR Lynton Crosby.
link to en.wikipedia.org
al urquhar
Nah. Thatcher gave military assistance to the Nihilist Marxist Khmer Rouge, I don’t see Dishface doing the same for RISE. Though you never know…. 🙂
There will be a referendum before the end of this parliament and we’re going to win it by about 20%
because John McTernan says we’re definitely not
He’s never been right about anything
Breeks
You have obviously forgotton your tablets today.
Borders railway a success. Now if we could just sort out the cross rail issue in Glasgow could travel from South West Scotland to the east and North.
Yes I remember that sleaze ball well Capella, nasty him and Redwood at the time, one of my enduring memories from that period was a press conference where that bastard was basically singling out ‘single mothers’ as ‘benefit scroungers’…they have always wanted to crush those they have deemed ‘less than’.
As for this Idox business, it’s suspicious alright, ballot papers, y’mean the ones with no barcode, just flimsy pieces of paper? I remember I had three of them to cross for Yes that day. And the postal votes?
They have the contract for next year’s elections too! Naw, I’m no having this, I’ve never thought our referendum result was true, this just adds fuel to an already disputed issue. As for the ‘rumour’ from a couple of threads ago that a ballot box was opened with 600 Tory votes and no others…
Hmmm.
D’ye ever get the feeling you’re being had?
Aye.
“People’s Front of Judea”?
Well, right back at ya, Rev!
Your Scottish Greens attack article yesterday was barrel-scraping petulance of the first order, akin to a Torcuil Crichton shit-stir about some arcane point he wants to twist to highlight the “Nats’ hypocrisy”.
For someone who portrays himself and his site as “pro-independence” you’ve grown noticeably intolerant of any viewpoint but that of the hardliner SNP orthodoxy. Everyone else, it appears, is a dillettante at best or sabateur at worst.
Your attribution of loyalties is simplistic too. There are plenty of No voters who voted SNP in the constituency because of trust in the government and/or their local MSP- I know of at least a dozen in my acquaintance. Likewise there are plenty of Green voters who voted SNP 1 – and judging by the Green turnout in this constituency last year, those two groups alone were extremely significant in ensuring no less a figure than John Swinney didn’t have to fall back on a list seat. Just imagine they’d withheld that vote – Torcuil Crichton would be crowing from now till Xmas.
In other words the entire political landscape is more subtle and complex than your bludgeoning analysis permits. You’re so busy badmouthing SUPPORTERS of independence and indulging in crass caricatures that you appear to have forgotten the real job at hand: Building a strong and stable majority for Yes.
That means persuading former No voters. It’s one thing to advocate an SNP x 2 strategy; it’s another thing to blame the failure of that strategy on others with different but still pro-indy views. Frankly you’re losing credibility with every post, like a ranting street corner preacher who condemns everyone who is blind to the one true faith he espouses.
If you really think picking fights with politicians, parties and activists who have worked their backsides off for a Yes vote and a Yes supporting party is in any way constructive, then maybe you need to go for that break. Make it a long one and see, just for once, if you can come back and acknowledge you might have got it wrong.
Cheers for that Rev. needed to be said.
O/T
panamapapers.icij.org/blog/20160509-offshore-database-release.html
Released at 7 pm.
@ Capella says at 6:32 pm ….. ”Peter Lilley CON is a director of a private company hired to manage the votes in Scotland, including the Referendum.
“Idox has had a hand in providing count software, including postal vote management support, among other services, for elections since at least 2012.”
link to archive.is
Well, well well. Now isn’t that positively scary! Privatised voting company providing count software. Remember the guy in the US who explained how the software could be rigged and go TOTALLY undetected. Postal votes being counted days before the polling stations had closed which I had already been informed of. Forget about Davidson. Her Conservative comrade-in-arms Lilley must have known well beforehand how the postal vote result was panning out. Were the postal votes sent to England for scanning? Why no exit polls? The ONLY way discrepancies can be highlighted. Well done Tories you’re duping everyone left, right and centre. I’m not surprised that Idox when approached for comment ”did not respond.’’ Time for us to carry out an investigation into this Company such as who else is on the Board. Strange too that we’ve not heard a dickie bird about this up until now.
‘Concerns raised over senior Tory MP link to election count firm
A TORY MP is a director of a company that has become a major player in how elections are managed in Scotland, it has emerged.
Concerns have been raised with the Electoral Commission about the involvement with Idox of former Tory Cabinet minister Peter Lilley, who is a senior non-executive director……
Objectors have questioned the rationale of awarding contracts to Idox when it has links to one political party, and about the “creeping privatisation” of elections.
Lilley, who served as trade and industry secretary from July 1990 to April 1992, has been a paid non-executive director for 14 years, and received £35,000 in 2015 for his services.
He holds 533,000 shares: 111,300 are in a self-invested pension plan and 59,250 are held through various members of his family.
When appointed as a director, during the infancy of the firm, executives told shareholders he “brings with him a wealth of experience of central and local government, which we believe will be of considerable benefit to the group, especially as it seeks to achieve an increasingly strategic role with both local and central government”…..
Their team of experts include former Electoral Registration Officers who Idox said advise the UK’s central government on initiatives such as the Individual Electoral Registration…….
Highcock said: “Idox is one of a number of companies that supplies various support to returning officers across Scotland, and indeed the UK, as they deliver elections.
“Such suppliers provide services including, for example, the printing of ballot papers and poll cards. All such contracts are awarded by the individual returning officers on the basis of what will provide the best value and quality with the interests of the voter always at the heart of all our activities and contracts.”
The Electoral Commission produces advice in advance of the Scottish Parliament elections to prevent the undermining of confidence in the electoral process following “high-profile” electoral fraud cases.
After with CGI winning the contract to provide vote systems for the 2017 local government elections, Idox said that with its e-counting system, scanning ballot papers can be achieved in four hours and calculations take just minutes, “improving the accuracy and auditability of results”…….
The system to count paper ballots electronically is due to undergo a year of testing, before teams will be trained at every local authority.
During the 2015 General Election, a team from Idox helped deliver its postal vote management system (PVMS) in local authorities across Scotland. Company details show that work began almost two weeks before polling day, with staff arriving on-site to set up the system and meet temporary staff “employed to open and scan the postal vote statement and ballot papers”.
“The scale of this operation varied from one local authority to another. Some of the smaller ones had 8,000 voting packs to get through before election day, whereas sites like Glasgow (with an anticipated 66,000 packs) would sometimes process more than that in one day,” said one description of what happened.
Company data reveals that the system helps to ensure postal votes are authentic by comparing voters’ original postal vote application (PVA) with the postal vote statement (PVS). The software compares the two forms using two unique identifiers – signature and date of birth.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The administration of elections in Scotland is the responsibility of individual returning officers for each local authority, who award contracts for support services, such as the printing of ballot papers and poll cards, on the basis of what will provide the best value and quality, with the interests of the voter always taking precedence.”
Idox was approached for comment but did not respond.’