The single basket
Remember when we’d had 20-odd Yes-majority polls in a row, and all the courtiers of Queen Nicola Of Trans were telling us that it was solely down to her personal strategic genius and cunning masterplan of gently persuading soft No voters by, um, not actually taking any steps to achieve independence in case it scared them?
We wonder whose fault this is, then.
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. We know that their answer is “Alex Salmond and the Bad Bloggers!” But what are sane people to make of it?
The last 25 polls are now basically back to a dead heat. There are 13 majorities for No, 12 for Yes and one tie. They’re spread across the range of polling companies – Savanta ComRes, Survation, YouGov and Panelbase have all recorded No leads in the above period, and three of them have also recorded Yes leads. Ipsos MORI appear to be solid for Yes, while YouGov are solid for No.
(Slightly worryingly the biggest Yes leads by a distance – 11 and 6 points in February and early March – have come from the previously unknown Hanbury Strategy, who aren’t British Polling Council members.)
Readers will doubtless all have their own theories as to the reason for what is now an unmistakeable slippage undeniable by even the most doggedly Pollyanna indy bloggers, however they might try to massage or disguise the figures. Is Sturgeon’s COVID advantage dissipating as the pandemic recedes? Is the continuing non-appearance of a perceptible Brexit apocalypse soothing last year’s waverers? Are domestic concerns more to the fore? We simply can’t say for sure.
But what’s certainly true is that it coincides with a drop in SNP support, from peaks last year just shy of 60% to something currently in the mid-to-high 40s and falling.
The SNP didn’t record a single constituency poll ranking below 50% in the whole of 2020. But in 25 polls conducted in 2021 they’ve only topped 50% six times, and only two of those have been in the last eight weeks (both nearly a month ago).
It seems quite the coincidence that independence support falls when support for the SNP does. It’s almost as if one party demanding and asserting sole ownership of the principle of independence makes that principle a hostage to political fortune when that party seems for its own internal reasons to be hell-bent on alienating large proportions of the electorate with unpopular policies and what seems more and more to be out-of-control hubris, corruption and failure.
The Yes movement has allowed itself to sleepwalk into a situation where it’s been subsumed into the private interests of a political party. It may already be too late to fix that for the next five years. But by creating some level of healthy competition in pro-independence politics there may still be a chance to save the cause in the longer term.
Only one leader has ever won a majority in the Scottish Parliament. Only one leader has ever delivered an independence referendum, and only one leader has ever overseen a major and lasting increase in the pro-independence vote, from the low 30s of pre-2007 to the unbroken high 40s of the last decade. That leader was presented with a single opportunity in 2011 (that he in fact created himself from the tiniest sliver in 2007), and seized it with both hands.
But the SNP is currently engaged in a determined attempt to destroy that leader to protect the personal fiefdom of a successor who’s achieved none of those things and has squandered countless chances to take decisive action, whether it’s because she’s scared to lose or because she doesn’t really want to win.
We’re absolutely partisan, but we’re pretty sure that an unbiased observer would feel that that perhaps might not be the smartest strategy for a movement that cared about reaching a specific goal, not just keeping a particular party in power. It might be wiser to have someone with such a record of proven achievement, if not centre stage then at least somewhere in the wings. It’s never good strategy to have a single point of failure.
So if you actually want independence rather than just to have the SNP comfortably in charge of a devolved government subservient to Westminster forever, readers, it might be an idea to actually vote for it next week.
I wonder who’s behind this new company, Hanbury Strategy
Goes without saying but – Sturgeon is an absolute & totally corrupt disgrace.
https://www.hanburystrategy.com/team
There’s a negative and disunited feel about Yes.
Unprecedented and toxic.
More than enough to turn off 5 in 100 voters.
Whose to blame? Probably a bit of everyone.
Quite disappointed in the leaders of all sides to be honest. Not the movement it once was.
It looks to me like the same old WM/MSM tactics.
Bigging up the lead then having the polls slip in the last week or so.
Saw this the other day and thought Aye Aye repeat performance.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56889344
Scottish Election 2021: Have the parties lost their momentum?
By Sir John Curtice
Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University
Who is behind Hanbury Strategy?
/
Paul Stephenson, former Director of Communications of Vote Leave
Based in Hanbury Street. Spitalfields.
Near J Nicolson’s tasteful Georgian dwelling?
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10361418/persons-with-significant-control
Sturgeon will be overjoyed at this latest Poll.
The last thing she wants is fighting for something that she definitely doesn’t want.
She’ll be too busy with pushing her freaky Reforms through the Scottish Parliament.
And it will play into her old mantra of waiting for a continuous amount of polls showing 60% or over.
I agree with Sturgeon on one thing, Indy shouldn’t be on the agenda until we clear her and her freaks out of the Scottish Parliament.
She’s a freaky fraud, as is Harvie.
Don’t Vote for Sturgeon/SNP or Harvie/Greens.
Govanhill/Polloksheilds/Glasgow Southside:-
Vote Sarwar 1 and ALBA 2
Stop Sturgeon in her tracks.
As someone previously mentioned:-
Ditch this Witch.
The only person to blame for the fall in support for Independence lives in Charlotte Square at Bute House.
The idea that you can work with the Greens and ignore ALBA is just insanity.
ALBA have sought to build a Super Majority by asking voters to vote SNP 1 and ALBA 2.
If Nicola Sturgeon had done likewise we would never be in this situation.
She consistently puts personality conflicts before the country.
I met a German journalist yesterday and explained that Independence is not about 2 personalities and it is certainly not about 1 party.
The WILL must prevail but it looks as though it may not be in 2021 and certainly not with the current attitude of the SNP leader.
If only the mainstream media gave a fraction of the coverage they are allocating to “Boris & the Flat Refurb” to “Nicola & the Missing Indyref Fund”, the Scottish public might wake up to what is going on.
@ P at 11:08 am
I wonder who’s behind this new company, Hanbury Strategy
Chum of D Cummings, pro Brexit getting contract from Johnson directly or indirectly, making a killing from Covid, No doubt will be please with Johnson and the bodies
EVANS, Simon James
GILL, Ameetpal Singh
STEPHENSON, Paul (Chum in Chief,I think)
Queen Nicla does not have a Legacy to stand on…
Talking to my 81 yr old mum last night about election and she said she couldnt make up her mind as she is a floatibg voter like me. She likes ‘that Nicola Sturgeon’ and would vote SNP but doesnt want another referendum and thinks its not the most important thing right now. She thinks health, education and supporting people in work and helping those unemployed is more important. I think she will end up voting for Willie Rennie who is our MSP but no idea will get her second vote.
Me – i’m voting both Conservative based on my discussion with willie rennie last week and his ignorance & naivety on the Trans issue and because of the Forwomen Scotland election guide.
Unfortunately I see no future with the SNP.
It’s not just the leadership, most potential and existing candidates or MSP’s and councillors are in lockstep with the leadership. I see no ‘policy revolt’, only a hardening in extremist policy.
Corbyn supporters in 2015 thought they could change the Labour party, they didn’t reckon that the PLP and other internal committees would be so steadfastly Blairite and actually work against Corbyn, actively sabotaging the 2017 GE campaign and bringing in the Tory/DUP alliance.
Same in the SNP. It’s internal machine, the NEC is now so rotten after the ‘critics’ have all left to join Alba that getting anything democratically done within the party is impossible.
The sane thing to do now is dump the SNP and move to Alba.
Look at Labour, six years in the wilderness and a new leader that can’t get near Johnson in the polls despite the heralding that within six months of taking the reigns, Starmer would be 20 points ahead.
Everyone in Europe that I know is sitting there looking at Scotlang Agog –
“Why aren’t you independent yet to get back to Europe?” they ask.
“Can’t you just leave? There a loads of English people who say they will move to Scotland if you get independence and rejoin the EU”. They shake their head over and over.
When I tell them that the SNP keep saying they want to wait until England gives us permission to vote to decide to leave or not they just look at me (over zoom recently).
“But you are the Scots, the warriors, the builders, the europeans. We are awaiting for you what is taking so long?”
And I have to say I don’t know why we are waiting so long other than the SNP have sucked up all the votes and instead of being about Scottish Independence or at the very least stopping “Scotland being dragged out of Europe against our will” (when instead it seems to all be about trying to stop England brexiting)….The SNP seem to want to be middle management in a company looking after their staff from the whims of Senior Management.
And frankly I think that sums up the middle-class-ness of the SNP. The are all about making things feel better rather than doing the right thing and breakout and make things better not just feelings. Where is the ambition? Where is the Vision? There is none.
So in the space of 7 years support for Yes has gone precisely nowhere? Despite Brexit, despite the most right-wing shower of nut-jobs ever to inhabit Westminster and despite the demographics continually moving in our favour?
Surely even the most deluded, indoctrinated cultist can see that that woman’s a fraud?
Oh well… we’ve waited over 300 years so what’s a few more? If it takes another 5 of this charlatan’s dithering and inaction to wake up the deluded then so be it.
These polls suit Sturgeon.
She doesn’t want independence.
She prefers the exercise of power, using it to push her pet projects.
As you say Stu, traditionally most people have identified the SNP as the sole route to independence,
They are now backing away from independence as they see the SNP floating away into la-la land.
Nicola Sturgeon is afraid to fail and more importantly, afraid to win.
Being the biggest party is just what she wants which is why they haven’t changed tack or revised their strategy one bit. Soft Nos are seeing other options but so to are ‘hard’ Yes.
The SNP is now the party of soft Yes. All a bit ‘meh’ and there is always something to stop them going for it. Their slogan should be:
Independence – It’s a good idea but maybe in a wee while.
I regard this as good news – the idea of an independent Scotland with the current SNP leadership in charge scares me. In my view, Salmond has his flaws – who doesn’t – but he is the most competent UK politician of my lifetime and believes in an independent Scotland.
I will vote Alba on the list but I will vote against SNP on the constituency. I still consider myself an SNP supporter but believe its current leadership could undo much of the progress it has made as a party. Sturgeon was the natural successor to Salmond, I applauded her appointment and supported her through the early years of her leadership but the last few years have changed that completely.
Rev Stu
The Weeshit for Indy mob, especially the Wings branch office, can’t handle this neverending thread after thread of outing all the Sturgeon failings. But it has to be done.
Some are even reverting to blaming the messenger.
I have never got behind the Sturgeon way of doing things.
If a true Indy Party emerges out of this, then I would dump Labour and get behind them.
So for the moment I will go with Labour 1 and ALBA 2.
And I’ll support the Labour vote in Glasgow Southside.
The fall in support for Indy and the mess Scotland finds itself in doesn’t lie at the door of the Rev in Bath, but with Sturgeon at the door of her luxury mansion at Bute House.
I’m not in the country but from what I can glean from Social Media and MSM reading there is a distinct mood of ennui out there regarding the H.E : even people formerly gung-ho about the SNP/Independence pre-Elections are noticeably quiet/absent this time and it’s my impression many ” soft ” SNP/Indy people are indifferent at best about the results , if not actively preferring the SNP do badly .
Anyone with a functioning intelligence knows without a shadow of a doubt what/who the problem is …..
Even that latest bit of kid-on independence ie Scotland relaxing ( some ) C19 restrictions slower than rUK ( YEA TAKE THAT BORIS !! lolsville ) has pissed people right off and will undoubtedly cost them votes .
Just hoping the latest positive polling for ALBA is reflected in the results next week .
*so TOO are hard ‘yes’ – ugh
Tartanfever says:
“The sane thing to do now is dump the SNP and move to Alba.”
Agreed. Its just a pity Alba wasnt formed a year or two ago.
I was scoffed at a few days ago on here for suggesting that after this election Alba must compete against the SNP directly.
I stand by that suggestion. Its the only way forward in my opinion.
How much of this is simply the effect of having an election – when voters actually think about what party they will vote for and not about whether that next trip to the shops to buy groceries for their aging parents will be the one they bring the virus along too.
Sure all polls are based on differences that are easily accounted for by margins of errors but all those “peaks” and “troughs” are just normal variation, depending on what the background sentiment is at the time.
Journalists with spaces to fill and little time to do it are just going to push a narrative that’s framed as if it was the rise and fall of empires they were writing about because it does not require much effort and they fill their quota and so the chance of them being fired that week recedes.
As the Rev. has observed before, nobody is really has the time to consider a referendum until someone actually starts the campaign. There are more important things to be getting on with.
Hanbury Strategy – From the first page of their ‘about us’ section:-
https://www.hanburystrategy.com/about-us
“The world is changing. We can help you understand it, navigate it, shape it”
I think that tells us what they are about.
Jennifer Allen
They are a PR company
Just out of curiosity, is there any polling data on the turnout for next week ?
“The medium is the message” as Marshall McLuhan pointed out. In this election Nicola! is the message.
I haven’t the words to express my contempt for Sturgeon.
Instead of being a bogus workman chapping the door of some nice old lady, bullshitting his way into the house before robbing her of her life savings, Sturgeon’s fraudulent persona is that of a Nationalist politician bullshitting a national amalgamation of Independence supporters to put their faith in her, when she doesn’t a give a shit about Independence. She’s conned them all out of their lifelong aspirations, and sold out their dreams of a free and Independent nation.
She’s a phoney. She’s a fraud.
Mind… Some people have been telling you this since 2015, but the horde of Wee Ginger Dug types wouldn’t hear of it. No doubt they’ll all be patting themselves on the back today.
A Supermajority was the SNP’s last chance, but they’re trying extraordinarily hard to fuck that up too.
It’s all ALBA, it’s only ALBA from here on out. As ALBA grows, I hope the party is a lot more discriminating about who it lets in than the SNP.
tartanfever says:
29 April, 2021 at 12:05 pm
Just out of curiosity, is there any polling data on the turnout for next week ?
Havnt seen any but i’d be surprised if its any higher than the usual mid 50%.
No cliché comes without its grain-of-truth—a week is a long time in politics.
Yes, it’s heartbreaking watching it all being thrown away. A damning indictment on a ‘leader’ who has failed to take advantage of the biggest buffoonery ever to step into Downing Street.
Altho people always say they will vote but often cant be arsed to actually vote.
Get out and Vote Alba. Have no doubt that SNP are not getting enough votes to get anyone on the list. Nicola Sturgeon has no doubt been busy with covid, however the remaining time has been spent trying to drive through trans laws based on non existing evidence. She should out there hammering home the economic case for independence. Once the votes have been counted and there is an indi majority, I will resigning from the SNP and fighting for independence.
All this was eminently predictable – no offence intended, Rev, and I hope none taken. You have gone way beyond the parameters of what anyone could expect of you to highlight what inevitably happens when people sink back into apathy about something. Oh, look the Brexit slump is not as bad as we thought. Oh, dear, I think independence just now would make matters worse. How many times do voters need to be told this, need to be directed towards it and shown that it will not last?
Yes, indeed, Alec Salmond is the only person in Scotland today who can bring us anywhere near independence – not because of seats. Oh, no. Because he is the only person who will stand up to the present administration. If she attacks him constantly for standing up for Scotland, she will be the one to come off worse. If she put personal spite and enmity before her country, she will never be forgiven. She has already betrayed the women of Scotland in a way that beggars belief: let’s protect women by taking away every single right they ever fought for. That’s progress. She has to be stopped and independence has to happen or both Scots, as a nation, and women will disappear under the heel of forces which care absolutely nothing for us. Zilch, nada, nights, rien.
last night BBC (Scotland) news had much detail on Wallpapergate over £58,000.
Then they panned to Nicola, holding a bunch of flowers for her to say “Boris is terrible and sleazy!”
Where are the difficult questions for Nicola on BiFab, Clde Shipbuilding, the missing £600,00?
How many people who are prepared to vote YES have a similar story? I was an SNP member, signed up immediately after indy ref, as thousands did, and excitedly believed that we were on the verge of a new dawn, with a genuinely inspirational leader in NS.
Since then, what has happened with regard to achieving independence. Bugger all is the answer and I had already binned my SNP membership before all the Salmond stuff emerged.
From there, I, as so many have, became utterly disgusted by NS and the SNP, and of the many reasons to detest them, number one, remains for me, the lack of any coherent plan or genuine desire to take the country towards another referendum, despite having numerous chances to do so.
When Alex and Alba emerged, suddenly here was someone and something that I could believe in again.
How many people share the same story?
Soda @ 12:00 pm
I was scoffed at a few days ago on here for suggesting that after this election Alba must compete against the SNP directly.
I stand by that suggestion. Its the only way forward in my opinion.
Agreed and the next Westminster election will be the place to start. What’s the alternative? Send another Feeble 48 down there again to let Boris know that we just won’t stand for whatever he plans to do to us?
I can just hear Sturgeon now – “It’s important that we send a message, etc, etc,…zzz…”
the house of lords comes in for regular criticism as being an unelected chamber in the the uk.that is true.but it comes in very handy from time to time,acting as a safety valve for government legislation.we have just had a government defeat,thanks to the house of lords over the cladding issue on high rise flats.if it had been succesful it would have left sitting leasholders with a massive repair bill & bancrupcy for many. scotland does not have a second chamber(safety valve).hence the unpopular hate crime and gender laws.so not only does scotlands current institutions not come up to the mark, it has no checks & balances via a second chamber.there is a long way to go for scotland to shake off its ” acting like banana republic” tag.
Can’t find the graph but about a week ago there was one showing her popularity rating have dropped to zero.
Most of the public are unaware of her corruption because of media blackouts and lack of attention span and inability to believe, process or cope with such terrible information.
Could it be that after the honeymoon dream wore off they just started to see her for what she is? It is easy for people who have been following her numerous dirty deeds, ridiculous reality-denying policies, wasted opportunities, terrible managerial skills etc but it took longer for the public who know nothing about any of it. I look her and can’t understand how anyone can’t see her for what she is. She isn’t hiding it, it is on show for everyone to see. Her nasty, vindictive, bitter, dishonest, stupid nature.
All that aside how can anyone not feel ill watching her head and body movements when she speaks. She looks like she is desperately trying to convince herself and her body has other ideas. It is like watching a body and mind at war with itself. All that ends up like a bobbing toy dog.
It’s going to get worse and worse for the SNP. I suspect they know the reason; they’re private polling and telemetry will be telling them straight — Sturgeon isn’t very well liked.
We are facing a catastrophic collapse in SNP support on an historic level.
Silver Darling – new SNP slogan – how about ‘Wheesht, just wheesht.” ?
Federalists will be happy..
Dave Beveridge @ 12:14 pm
No mate, the place to start will be the council elections next May.
Vote SNP 1&2 doesn’t fit the Local Election STV system. This is why I’m so excited to see the sort of member/activist leaving the SNP for Alba. These people bring decades of grassroots organisation and campaigning experience with them and are irreplaceable. Lets see how far the blue or green haired genderbenders get knocking doors in the pissing rain for the Auchenshoogle ward!
Will Sturgeon take personal responsibility should the SNP fail to get their majority, do the honorable thing and resign?
Their election strategy has been built around the leader’s popularity. For years Sturgeon has been the face of the SNP on leaflets, buses, helicopters.. It will be her failure.
Everybody at Hanbury seems to be either an ‘associate director’, or ‘senior executive’. Lots of chiefs – or just made-up job titles? Methinks, the latter.
The SNP wants power. That is it. Under devolution they have that, and will continue to have it. Independence is a different kettle of fish, too many unknowns, failure will kill off Nikla and her Stasi.
They also know that many centrist voters think Nikla is good for Scotland but don’t want the full monty of independence. The SNP know that fine, and are more than content to pay lip service to indy when they need votes, or to reassure supporters, but they have no real interest or passion for it. Why should they, when they rule the roost, and are handsomely rewarded for it – big salaries and pensions they would have no hope of getting elsewhere, given the mediocrity of their abilities and talents.
And, of course, they get an easy ride from the media, who gullibly accept their never ending excuses and lies over their colossal waste of our money on losing court cases, crony schemes and corruption.
They’ll never have it so good as they have now. What does an MSP have to do all day? Not much at all, they have precious little influence, they just have to troop through the lobby supporting whatever Nikla tells them to do.
Jeez too many chiefs and nae indian braves https://www.hanburystrategy.com/team
Patrick Harvie on Sky. Oh dear, oh dear.
https://twitter.com/Whiterosehip01/status/1387730233802084360
The last 4 paragraphs are as excellent a summation as I’ve read in a long time. Its the sort of stuff WGD used to excel at (not a wind up, just an observation).
I know you say you’re partisan Rev, but I think it’s as fair a representation as anyone with informed critical faculties could and should make. Stating facts, not opinions. It might catch on.
If you’re best arguments are ‘look at the polls’ or ‘look at her approval ratings’, once those benchmarks are no longer complimentary, what have you got? Answer, exactly the same argument you had before – NOTHING.
This really is going to be a fascinating election result. Irrespective of polling or media blackouts, those in the know are well aware of SNP/Sturgeon inaction & Alba/Salmond focus. The types who’ve defected from the SNP, Womens Officers, Equalities Officers, MPs etc wont be going unnoticed by significant amounts of ‘SNP voters’ for whom independence is the priority. Therefore I suspect (and hope its not just my blind optimism) that there will be a decent turnout for Alba. Its hard to vote when you need to choose the least worst. Much easier when you feel there is something positive to vote for. Theres probably a name for that effect. So I’m hopeful.
One last point. Politics in the main and Indy until its achieved are both ongoing processes. Whenever someone says things like ‘last chance for Indy’, I think its total bollox. In this article the Rev says “It may already be too late to fix that for the next five years”. Much better use of language. Its never too late. Of course certain actions and events make things more or less likely, but quite simply, until it happens, and it will, Independence for Scotland will not go away!!!
…or as Oprah Winfrey might have put it,
‘you can be a senior executive, and you can be a senior executive..EVERYBODY! can be a senior executive..’
Fingers crossed Alba do well, otherwise independence is finished. Holyrood, at best will become a glorified talking shop, with fewer and fewer powers as the years slip by.
Soda @ 12:28 pm
No mate, the place to start will be the council elections next May.
You’re right – forgot about them.
Whatever happens next week it’s time to start phasing the SNP out as the “party for independence”. When Salmond shows Sturgeon up on a weekly basis as clearly having no intention of doing anything about it, the Yes voters will see it’s time someone else had a go.
Distinct lack of any buzz out on the pavement.
Everywhere is dead in the evening – because of months of lockdown – very few around to engage in discussion.
I’ve had a few ‘no smoke without a fire’ comments about AS so NS and the media have done a good job there.
Had a few – ‘I dinna vote’ and a few polite but firm refusals.
My colleagues involved in leaflets is walking with a ‘spring’ in their step and feel that they are making history.
SNP is a busted flush.
I’ve also heard a few ‘we need to recover from the pandemic before we think about Indy; it’s not the most important thing just now’.
There is a lot of work to do!
DJ
“Holyrood, at best, will become a glorified talking shop”
I fear that Holyrood will cease to exist and a federal UK will be the outcome – pushed as the answer to Brexit. (with Wales – don’t know how N/Ireland will pan out after Forster resignation, suspect more Unionist, but reuninfication is always a possiblity)
One country, no borders, no business problems, easy travel, trade benefits.
To paraphrase – Unity is strength!
Hi Soda at 12:00 pm.
You typed,
“Tartanfever says:
“The sane thing to do now is dump the SNP and move to Alba.”
Agreed. Its just a pity Alba wasnt formed a year or two ago.”
You have to remember that AS’s hands were metaphorically tied by the two court cases and Holyrood Enquiries so no move could be made until they were out of the way.
And to think last year she was asking whether we should delay this Election.
I bet it can’t come quickly enough.
Being saying it since 2014. People (like me) might vote for possible hard times and difficulty if the destination is a good one and the leaders are honest. On a matter so crucial to folk’s lives, they won’t vote for a pig in a poke and they certainly won’t vote for a country dominated by woke, authoritarian incompetents. Well done Sturgeon AND Salmond, liars both, you’ve ruined the dream.
For those who trot out the braindead, bottom-feeder, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, Record-skimming line ‘there’s no smoke without fire’:
NH?+HCl=NH?Cl
I wonder whether Covid will skew the election results.
The young will not be put off but the older generation may be put off voting in person.
I suppose it will depend on the uptake of postal ballots.
I suspect it may be the young who are liable to be most influenced by and supportive of the woke agenda.
Bah humbug.
NH3+HCl=NH4Cl
SilverDarling – thanks for sharing that clip of Patrick Harvie. In a coalition he’ll have (or may have) a cabinet position, so his views will really continue to matter. His views strike me as if they were tempered in the fires of student union debating, at tough dinner parties and frank exchanges of views with those he hasn’t blocked on Twitter. A truly round individual.
..sorry, I meant a truly rounded individual. Honest.
Round or rotund fits as well
Unless there is a change in the SNP leadership, Independence is off the table! Period!!
I do think the SNP are dying : no money, no footsoldiers, no passion, no coherent leadership and no political strategy to achieve independence.
And on further negative points – they have a surfeit (one would be one too many) of science-denying narcissists. And the undying support of our imperial master’s presstitutes. And cosyfeet pete, mhairi “you’re all jeremys” black, stewart macdonald and daddybear.
This cannot continue.
I predict that Alba will go from strength to strength.
Contrast the Scottish media’s treatment of Queen Nic with the English media’s treatment of Boris Johnson.
There has been wall to wall coverage for days of Boris’s flat refurb.
The IndyRef fund (a much larger sum) went missing while in the care of the SNP, a police investigation was launched and … nothing, or next to nothing.
Even though the Scottish (bad) news blackout continues, the evidence of SNP/ScotGov actions over the past few years is still there, as is Chris Cairns’s crumbling dam wall of 13 March 2021.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/img512.jpg
Cosy Feet Pete has got his excuses in early, the cowardly, idiotic lickspittle
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/1387683855323308032
And for those that didn’t see the clip Harvie states unequivocally that a woman with male genitalia is a woman and should have full access to women’s spaces. We all knew that was his view but there’s not the usual tap dancing during the answer. Clear and to the point.
The greens will only steer the SNP deeper into the weeds.
How has this idea captured the middle ground of our politics so completely? It’s the most obvious example of fiddling while Rome burns I can think of in recent political memory.
Truly committed to the policy SNP and Greens?
Cost it.
Tell us how much this will cost the Scottish NHS to facilitate all of this. Because it’s not free and nobody expects to have to go private. And then tell me again about that porta cabin you’re planning to open to help with the drug deaths in Scotland. I exaggerate of course, but you get the picture. Priorities. Get them right.
I’ve been having a think about Nicola Sturgeon and why she’s pushing the HCB and the GRA stuff. It’s been bothering me for some time and I know the theory is being mild that it’s pure stubbornness and once she gets the bit between her teeth she does not veer from the course she’s on. I don’t think that’s enough but I’ve no doubt it’s part of it. It occurred to me the other day, and I apologise if it’s already been mooted by others, that since she’s been in power she’s been really pushing the ‘Scotland is a progressive country’ in opposition to what she says England stands for. Not only that, she wants the world to believe it, and that she, a woman, is the driving force behind it.
Feminism is progressive, patriarchy is regressive. She crows often about how powerful women are so much better than men at running countries and large institutions and that women are more nurturing and caring. She ranks herself alongside Christine Legarde, Jacinda Ahern and Caroline Lucas. They are held up as beacons in a dark world, including herself. She is lauded for it everywhere, as are the others, though all are highly dubious in my book.
For Nicola Sturgeon, I believe this is about her legacy. She cannot be beaten by her predecessor who brought the country on leaps and bounds e.g. legalising gay marriage in a country that not to far back in the past was vociferously against it. She wants to be better than him, the past master. She wants to be more progressive than him. She wants to be adored. She wants to leave with her place in history assured. However, her hubris and unwillingness to know when to cut her losses, regardless of the impact on everyone around her and on society as a whole, is what will be her downfall. Her legacy will be in ruins because she is unable to compromise no matter the cost, literally. She has an unshakeable and delusional belief that she’s infallible – Saint Nicola, the selfie queen, the kind, the compassionate, the progressive, the defender and protector of the helpless. This is what I think drives her, Queen Mummy.
I will leave this dedication here for her excessive pride, cavity and presumption:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Cavity? I meant vanity!!!
The fact that transpeople should not be discriminated against is a given – but what is not a given is that they should be able to access WOMENS’ spaces – are plain ordinary women the only ones in Harvie and Nicola’s world that have no rights.
Thank Heavens we have Alex Salmond!!
Sturgeon has done a deliberate hatchet job on the SNP and the yes movement as a result!
Alba is our only lifeline. History will not be kind to sturgeon.
lothianlad 1:09 pm
Independence isn’t going to be off the table when half of Scots are committed to it. The SNP is not the sole vehicle by which independence can be resumed. And since the SNP has all but abdicated from its historic mission, then Alba must supplant it and take over that mission.
Resume Independence.
There’s a slogan that sounds clear, confident and purposeful, and the antithesis of the glacialist obedience to London of the Sturgeon party.
Heather
Sturgeon’s legacy
“My works…. that colossal wreck, boundless and bare”
/
We have to hope that she is removed before she causes extensive collateral damage
Is there a breakdown of where the drop in support is coming from?
Vaguely remember the Ghana advocacy twitter feed putting up a graph showing support from men for the SNP falling and that was where much of the support for Indy came from.
“winifred mccartney says:
29 April, 2021 at 1:24 pm
The fact that transpeople should not be discriminated against is a given – but what is not a given is that they should be able to access WOMENS’ spaces”
Maybe we should change the rules to “No penises in women’s spaces”
Not too long ago, the halfwits and careerists in Midlothian SNP were fawning over the visit to Dalkeith of their beloved queen Nicola!
Paying lip service to Independence for the benefit/manipulation of the independence supporting half wits, she also was surrounded by her gang of grovelling title chasing gravy train passengers.
Now it seems that the nature deniers in Midlothian SNP are punting their agenda unchallenged!
The Yes movement really need to waken up to the fact that the SNP are screwing up our best chance for independence!
kapelmeister ….
That’s why I’m a member of the ALBA party.
Excellent article Stu and completely on point as always!
I cannot wait until after this election is over, not for the results, although they will be quite interesting with the rise of the Alba party, but for the post-election mass defection of pro-indy, womens rights and true equality act supporting MP/MSPs from the SNP to the Alba Party.
It’s going to be a real doozy when that happens, it may even stop the SNP from being able to form a majority with the ultra-woke Scottish Green Party who do not care about independence so long as they can push their science and biology denying gender woowoo pish into law by holding SNP bills to ransom without their support.
The icing on the cake of this year may well turn out to be the missing £600k police investigation which is yet to properly appear on the public radar and on the front pages of the MSM, along with all the other sordid sins the woke branch of the SNP have been up to aka P. Grady, A. Robertson, P. Gibson, N. Sturgeon etc, coming fully into the public light and getting some serious scrutiny, it’s no wonder the SNP’s ratings and the indy polling is looking so dire when you recount the events of the past 3 years and all this additional stuff on top, the public are not as stupid as the SNP leadership assume them to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% for independence but the SNP under its current totalitarian authoritarianistic science and biology denying leadership are not fit to govern nor to call themselves Scotland’s national political party.
Heather says: Feminism is progressive, patriarchy is regressive.
It’s interesting that people believe this, because there’s no real sociological or historical evidence for it.
Matriarchal societies (the logical alternative to patriarchy) have always tended to be stubbornly primitive and poor, shivering in crude huts and at the mercy of disease and the weather. Patriarchy gave us the steam engine, electricity, the aeroplane, the greatest abundance of food in human history, the ZX Spectrum and the music of Chesney Hawkes.
However, it’s possible that true matriarchy has never been tried.
So if, according to Harvie, a woman can have male genitalia and still be a woman, then it appears that, for certain people, bodies have got nothing to do with gender.
In that case, these certain people should keep out of the spaces of women and men for whom this is not the case.
Galloway’s party leaflet introduces his candidates. They include a retired Regimental Sergeant Major and an Oxford lecturer. Says it all.
Why do people say Galloway’s a great maverick and it would be good to have him at Holyrood? He’s a selfish ultra-unionist whose hatred of Scotland comes through loud and clear.
What about the theory that Scots are savvy enough, on the one hand, to have twigged that by continuing to return the SNP to power as a government they’ll keep getting the higher spending and numerous freebies which the SNP provide and which impact on their day to day lives whilst, on the other hand, knowing or suspecting that independence might make at least some of these things unaffordable so aren’t supportive of actual independence.
Also, when support for independence still only hovers around the 50% mark, give or take a bit, it’s a very high risk strategy to go for another referendum and focus votes minds on the question in the face of the undoubted onslaught of Project Fear arguments that would be made against it, since to lose a second vote really would be game over for decades to come. Waiting and trying to get support consistently into the 60%+ territory would make it a much safer bet to hold another referendum that could actually be won and deliver independence sooner than would happen with a second lost vote
@Cenchos That Hanbury company looks extremely representative of, er, the English Public School system.
I can just picture James Connolly talking to Patrick Pierce outside Dublin’s GPO in 1916:
Are we sure we want to go on with this, Patrick? The opinion polls are nae affy guid.
What the gender identitarians do not want to hear.
https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex
https://waltheyer.com/transgenders-4-studies-say-its-mental-disorders/
This also seems a condition of fetish oriented males appropriating what they perceive as «the feminine» for self gratification.
Deviance parading as a legitimate right makes a mockery of the concept of «rights».
The West needs to get its head out of the fluffy pink clouds of irrational sexual fantasy before a horde rides out of the desert and beheads it.
https://www.conciliators-guild.org/ibn-khaldun-life-and-work/
Red says
Patriarchy gave us the steam engine, electricity, the aeroplane, the greatest abundance of food in human history, the ZX Spectrum and the music of Chesney Hawkes.
—–
Ah, No! Correlation is NOT causation!
At Companies House, Hanbury Strategies are listed under “Public relations and communications activities”. So they’re a PR/lobbying outfit, not a polling company.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2InC6bWaw
This doesn’t miss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2InC6bWaw
Trying again…
From The Guardian, yes down to 42%. That is pitiful, and all down to Nikla and her vendettas and lies. She is losing the benefit of doubt that many people gave her, and now comes across as a flinty-eyed presbyterian with a big chip on her shoulder, intolerant and fanatical about her pet niche concerns to the exclusion of the bread and butter issues.
“Support for Scottish independence has fallen to 42%, its lowest level since just before the general election 2019 that gave Boris Johnson a resounding Westminster majority, in the latest poll for the Scotsman by Savanta ComRes.
The poll, which maintained a recent downward trend in backing for independence in Savanta ComRes polls, put support for remaining in the UK at 49%, with 8% don’t knows. Stripping out don’t knows, it gave 54% no to 46% yes.
Those findings highlight much greater volatility and decline in the yes vote during the Holyrood election campaign, after a remarkably consistent series of more than 20 polls showing majority support for independence since 2019, which reached 59% for yes in October 2020.”
The situation was ripe for the SNP to build the indy argument, make plans in a way that would have carried the majority and make indy seem inevitable. She has blown it on a massive scale. The only honorable thing to do is resign after the election, or the SNP members to take matters into their own hands.
“No penises in women’s spaces”
Ah, but the penises in question would be female ones, according to certain maniacs.
I think we all have to face up to the damage that Nicola has done to our cause.
There is not going to be a magic wand to fix this. We need to rebuild our movement and spread it across the political spectrum. It is going to take at least 5-6 years.
It is going to take a lot of pain and suffering. There is no guarantee that we can fix it. However the first step is accepting where we are and understanding how we ended up here.
Sturgeon cannot be allowed to do more damage. She needs to go. Giving her and her party a bloody nose in May. Seems to be the only way I can think of moving forward.
The worst outcome is an SNP outright majority. The best is Nicola losing her seat and a super majority of indi parties.
Great article. We relied on you pre-referendum, we’re reliant on you now.
It’ll be a sweet taste of victory the day we can say; ‘a blogger helped bring down the bogus, corrupt First Minister of Scotland’.
Sturgeon Out.
My family will definitely be voting for the Alba party on the regional list and at the moment it will be very difficult to vote for the Snp party re Gra reforms and the HCB bill although Alex is asking us to vote for the Snp on the constituency vote .
Found this the other day re the Snp ,
“SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon announces new independence referendum bill”
https://archive.ph/25AlK
She has had four and a half years to do something about what she said in the article and she has done nothing about it since then .
Red, “and the music of Chesney Hawkes” Brilliant, if I had any idea how to do a smiley face on this Tablet you’d get a lot of them. Your humour and that of some other posters , plus your insights, whatever peoples perspectives, brightens my day.
Pete Wishart is right when he attributes the bad poll results to “splitting the movement by constantly attacking the leadership of the SNP”. I’d possibly take issue with his use of the word “movement” on the basis that the SNP aren’t part of the “movement” for independence, and as usual he refuses to consider why we are attacking the leadership, but it’s too late to teach that old dog anything new.
When the Westminster elections come around again, maybe he will be more receptive to our reasons for attacking the leadership. We can only hope that by then that we have a new leadership and he’ll face deselection, which he entirely deserves.
These poll results should be celebrated. The SNP leadership has assumed all along that ordinary people and the grassroots don’t matter. Well, these latest polls suggest otherwise.
Read’em and weep, you shower of self-serving corrupt scumbags.
Ian Mac
The situation was ripe for the SNP to build the indy argument, make plans in a way that would have carried the majority and make indy seem inevitable. She has blown it on a massive scale.
Indeed she has. The entire hierarchy have pissed away a great opportunity. The argument for Independence has moved nowhere in the past 7 years. Want proof? Just dig through the latest Ashcroft Poll:
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lord-Ashcroft-Polls-Scottish-Political-Research-April-2021-2.pdf
With results like 43% of people think energy bills would increase shows that the thinking is stuck somewhere in the first decade of this century. I’m sure the Ashcroft goal is either to confuse or distort (hence the animal question) or it could be their thinking is stuck somewhere around 2005 as well. In any case it’s clear there’s no fresh ideas, fresh answers or any movement at all in recent years. All this new sources of power, new technology, entire new industries and the “brains” of the SNP are sitting decades in the past.
Pete Wishart illustrates everything that is wrong with the SNP. A blind belief in the leadership cult, where the tiniest criticism is heresy, with an entitled belief that he and his circle exclusively represent and speak for the independence movement. A circle of people who do not even represent their ordinary members, poor suckers who have been taken for a ride.
Their first instinct is to lash out and blame their critics, so used have they become to ruling the roost without question. Instead of doing everything they can to further independence, listening closely to their members and supporters, and seeking support across the whole indy movement, not just the SNP faction of it.
Their self regard, coupled with their sulking, defensive posture is enough to turn off many, many voters – they don’t need bloggers to do that, they are entirely responsible for their own negative image. What else do you expect when you have spent two years and millions of pounds on a vindictive, pointless witch hunt, based on illegal behaviour, against an innocent man who set up the SNP and all your cosy little jobs?
Support for Independence is dropping and support for the SNP is also dropping and the trouble is that while Scots who where willing to vote for the SNP or Independence to go back into the EU no longer believe the SNP and Sturgeon is bothered about the EU just like the Nationalist know that Sturgeon isn’t bothered about Independence, through this whole election Sturgeon has avoided talking about EU when at the last election they where stating “we won’t be taken out of the EU against our will” and look where we are now. How anyone who has more than two brains cells can’t realize that Sturgeon is a major problem not only for Independence but to try and get us back into the EU as quickly as possible.
Is it just me that has noticed that support for Indy started falling the minute Alba hit the beach.
I do not think Salmond is much of a benefit for Independence.
Another list party by all means, I am all for that, but preferably not one led by Salmond.
gullaneno4
That’s distinctly possible. There are two possibilities 1) people are not that keen on Salmond – I guess we’ll find out soon enough or 2) the torrent of negativity from the SNP has either revealed their true selves and the electorate does like what they see or everybody is realising that if Alba and the SNP are going to be engaged in trench warfare for the next few years there’s little point in worrying about independence as it’s not going to be forthcoming.
It’s time we have a conversation about the Lord Advocate & The separation of powers!
April 21, 2021
Martin James Keatings
No Comments
Peoples Action on Section 30
It would seem that in the peoples action, the Lord Advocate has gone rogue again!
Yesterday, the Lord Advocate (Yes! The person who is supposed to defend the Scottish Parliament and who is a member of the Scottish Government) took it upon himself to lodge documents with the court with regards to a case brought in the high court of England, and try to found upon it as a precedent which the court should consider as part of the people’s action.
Today, the Advocate General (Yes! The conservative advocate general that represents the Tory Government at Westminster) predictably lodged paperwork that basically says: “What he said!”. This is becoming a recurring theme, which absolutely smacks of the Lord Advocates strings being pulled from London.
I am no longer making any attempt to hide my contempt for the Lord Advocate, who seems to be on a mission to undermine the Scottish Parliament and its powers.
The man is a menace to the Scottish Parliament!
Counsel has lodged a response to his filing and the long and the short of it is that we have (quite rightly) stated that the Lord Advocate has unilaterally (and without notice) taken it upon himself to place new material before the court despite the court having made avizandum (which is legal-speak for the judges having already retired to consider the arguments).
It’s highly strange (or some might argue, highly convenient) that this has happened after parliament broke for the election.
There are some things to note about this supposed ruling in England that the Lord Advocate is trying to have the judges consider – it was in reference to a judicial review.
Our case is not a judicial review.
It was a ruling from the English Courts – Scotlands legal system is not the same as England’s legal system.
It was a ruling under English Law – Scottish law is different from English Law, and the material substance of the ruling has diddly squat to do with our case.
A judicial review in England & Wales has no precedential value in Scotland!
There are obviously other arguments we’ve advanced but that is the broad strokes.
Doesn’t it make you just feel warm and fuzzy that the Lord Advocate (who is supposed to protect the powers and prerogatives of the Scottish Parliament) is using your tax money to undermine the Scottish Parliament? The man has become more political than I am!
I’ll tell you one thing! I make it to Holyrood in this election – we’re going to have a very big conversation about the separation of powers and actually ensuring Holyrood has someone who’ll defend our national parliament, not undermine it! Because, quite clearly, the Lord Advocate isn’t up to the task, self evidenced by the fact that 73% of legal experts asked about his dual role in a recent survey have opined those roles should be split up.
The Lord Advocate is supposed to be politically neutral, but out of all of the recent scandals, his name just keeps popping up.
It’s time to have a conversation about the Lord Advocate.
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Look I dont like this trans rights over womens rights either but the fact is the ONLY route for independence is through voting SNP.
Voting anything else in the constituency seat is madness. You can use your list vote as a protest vote if you wish.
Lets get independence done. Then we can all argue the rights and wrongs of gender and sex and all the rest of that stuff.
@Effigy – I’m with you all the way on this. Not only is it embarrassing, it is also very expensive, running-up bills for mallicious prosecutions which his department (the COPFS) haven’t a hope in Hell of paying.
Yup. She planned this to be her victory lap where she toured the country and got congratulated for how well she’d handled covid*, expecting to be deferred to as usual. The problem in a democracy is those pesky voters have a habit of asking questions. Everyone I know, nationalist and unionist, including a number who are still going to vote SNP, are just sick of her. One I heard twice yesterday (I took the day off to go to the pubs after they reopened) was “she thinks she’s the fucking Queen”. I haven’t seen the poll referred to above that says that her net rating was now zero, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
I am told that private polling of Southside says that she is on course to lose the seat, I have no idea of how likely that is.
And yes, the needlessly strict restrictions just to differentiate from Johnson are now starting to seriously fuck people off and will, I predict, make the difference.
She will not be the first minister as of 1st June.
*= actually not very well.
YES…after this election…new independece movement…not
involving anyone in any political party…the biggest lobby
group in SCOTLAND.
Re the fall in support for the SNP.
Might it be that a lot of people who were prepared to “hold their noses and vote SNP,” have now decided – we will no longer support them,but will give our List vote to ALBA.
Some others might have got fed-up being “Wheesht for Indy,” and decided to switch to ALBA.
It might be that the majority of the electorate, and in particular those at the thicker end, haven’t noticed Alex is now with ALBA, think he’s still with the SNP and are not supporting them for this reason.
I mean, we do have a lot of thinck people in the electorate – otherwise, how would Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems still have support and pro-Independence be in the minority.
gullaneno4 says:
29 April, 2021 at 3:23 pm
I do not think Salmond is much of a benefit for Independence.
And Sturgeon is?
Alex Salmond has done more for Scottish Independence than anyone else alive, and ALBA had every prospect of success in delivering a Supermajority if only the conceited pricks in the SNP had been genuine in their commitment to Scottish Independence.
Sturgeon has all but destroyed the SNP and squandered one chance after another to set Scotland on course to Independence. It’s quite something to be such a dismal failure in your job that people cannot honestly tell if you’re a stooge working for the British Establishment or just ludicrously incompetent.
I would trust Alex Salmond to serve Scotland’s interests until his dying breath, and also have absolute confidence in his capacity to get Scotland Independent. Sturgeon is just another name to be added to the long list of rogues who sell Scotland down the river.
I am suspicious of Polls , whether they support my position or not. Not for reasons of manipulation (albeit they tend to focus miraculously with the ” prevailing wind” within the MSM and the “Bubble ” that promotes or stokes the “front pages”)
I’ve noticed the similarities between Pollsters and Economists (and Climate Scientists to be fair) in their predictions or projections (not entirely sure what the difference is to laymen, but apparently its a “thing” in academia primarily as an excuse for failings)
On Pollsters my suspicion is aroused when they get things spectaculary wrong in the weeks proceeding an actual poll, such as Trump in the USA where IIRC the day before some revered analyst whose name escapes me (think it was Nat somebody or other in the NYT?) Stated with 92% certainty that HC would win and win not only the popular vote(which she did), but also the Electoral College which was and still is however much any Americans dislike it the “only game in town.
Secondly but not exceptionally was the 2017 GE, which had Theresa ( my naughtiest thing I ever did, was skipping through some wheatfields with my bestie) May 30 pts ahead at one point of Comrade Corbyn and sailing towards an unassailable (sorry) majority …. woops!
I hear you cry “its not an exact science you know”, yes I do know but putting the word science in relation to polling is in my view taking the piss. Here’s why for two reasons (1) in Scotlands case their is a population of circa 5.5 million, take out non-voting citizens such as children and look at the sample sizes of any given poll and (2) because in part due to (1) do people really change their life long believes in the weeks/days leading up to an election??.
I get why polls have their uses but suspect party internal polls have more substance as they reflect more what “people on the doorstep are thinking, rather than a random sub-set on the telephone. Hence Labour in England knew they were losing the “Red Wall” and why but just couldn’t bring themselves to admit it and still can’t and calling the voters phobes of whatever fetishism or religion and thick to boot doesn’t work.
Whatever my feelings on Independance I genuinely hope the same thing happens in Scotland as what happened in England was in my view the beginning of the fight back against all of this nonsense and virtual signalling bollix, hence where they were burrowing under most ordinary peoples radar they’ve been forced out into the open because ordinary people feel emboldened to point them out and the MSM (with the exception of the Gruniard and the Glorious BBC) eventually slowly follow.
Ultimately its about having faith that eventually when prompted enough “the Silent Majority” will stand up and be counted.
Hopefully
@gullaneno4
If you look at the table you’ll see that the big fall in yes support has been in the last two weeks. Alba have been around for 4 weeks.
This coincides with the abject performances of Sturgeon on the independence questions over that period. She couldn’t give cogent answers on either the economic case or the borders question. Soft yes have started to move to soft no and who would blame them.
The SNP constituency vote is holding up at 45%.
SNP list votes will be wasted votes.
Alba has barely had any media coverage. Exactly how has Alba reduced the yes vote?
Socrates Macksporran,
Classic, when your in a situation where your losing or have lost (see Remainers, Labour or the Limpdums for details) blame the voters, works every time!!!!
Remember the Angry Salmond t-shirts The national made and sold? The one where Alex is wearing a pink beret. I’ve still got mine and was thinking about wearing it on Saturday when I stravaig doon Inverurie High Street.
A vote winner or a definite no no?
Do the bumpers in the SNP truly believe Independence support has fallen because of Alex Salmond? Feckin seriously? All the sleaze, accusations and mismanagement of the SNP. It’s pushing me enough NOT to vote for them, totally finger-off-the-pulse stuff. All that’s saying to me is “we’re oblivious to what we’re doing and we’re going to blame someone else”. The Tory bogey man isn’t working anymore so we need a new bad guy.
They just don’t ‘get’ Scotland do they? Floating No and hard No voters are just going to look at the SNP with their HCB and GRA policies, cosying up to a party where some members have nappy fetishes and think ‘are you for fucking real?’, we’re not voting for this shite. These voters have decided they don’t want the SNP leading an Independent Scotland. Independence was always going to be a hard sell, but they’ve just made it harder.
I had my concerns about Nicola Sturgeon and her ability to deliver Independence a few years ago when she refused to appear at Yes rallies or on stage. I mean if you are totally passionate about Independence and that’s your party’s sole reason for existing, then why wouldn’t you want to use your popularity to push for it as much as possible?
gullane – In answer to your question : REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED and remember she said ” REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED” and she would fully REDACTED with the enquiry.
REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED is utterly trustworthy according to REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED. The nauseous nine REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED.
She knew, she may have started it ( I think that conclusion is inescapable), she knows everyone involved and now she’s reaping the whirlwind.
Her and her party’s fall from grace has nothing to do with any other party. And everything to do with ignoring her members (and ex-members ) and not debating her idiotic primary policies.
She has not moved independence forward by one single iota. And more and more folk are noticing. She and her husband have spent a lot of other people’s money and achieved nothing.
“a stooge working for the British Establishment or just ludicrously incompetent.” – pick one ? (Thanks to breeks for the quote )
The COVID umbrella has been punctured, the scrutiny of a General Election is creating problems for the SNP. They must hope their policies on GRA and the HCB remain unknown to the bulk of the electorate. Otherwise today’s problems will be as nothing to the problems ahead.
somerled says:
29 April, 2021 at 11:39 am
Me – i’m voting both Conservative based on my discussion with willie rennie last week and his ignorance & naivety on the Trans issue and because of the Forwomen Scotland election guide
If you are going to vote according to the ForWomen guide perhaps you should be considering a vote for ALBA? Unless of course you don’t want independence?
Regarding “angry salmond” – I don’t think he’s angry yet. But if I was lesley evans I’d prepare for the worst. And the rest of them after he’s finished with her.
Regarding t-shirts – I have a hard and fast rule -‘ only wear them if they match your eyes’.
Hope this helps.
First 100 days plan does not mention a referendum. Funny that
Pete Wishart not only blocks Scots from his twitter feed that live in Scotland, but also Scots living overseas. He really is a strange kind of fella.
Hold your noses or whatever and head over to Spiked and read the article “why Maya Forstater must win”, any feelings that you had that you were fighting alone will disappear.
@Astonished 4:33pm
Thanks.
Just as well there ain’t an indy referendum anytime soon.
Quite a few scores have to be settled first.
That’s all I’m sayin. 🙂
Regarding the school that’s sinking into the mud – perhaps we should start letting the dog see the rabbit? Undernoted is one of the opinions I have from worldwide experts. I have another 47No others just like it:
‘An interesting problem. The original Soil Investigation Report identified a ground and (problematic) groundwater condition! design assumingly accounted for this! subsequently the groundwater regime was altered (unintentional cut-off trench) from that assessed in the design! The solution would seem to be restore the groundwater regime to that assumed in the design.
Also a reduced bearing due to inundation at foundation level from groundwater is of concern regarding settlement of the building and infrastructure. Diverting/ restoring groundwater should not unintentionally lower the groundwater table. As EC7 (Part 2, 2.1.4) now details groundwater as a principle, P (no alternative) concern regarding foundation design – 28th September 2017’.
This sounds pretty serious to me. Does it not sound serious to you? ‘Settlement of the building and infrastructure’?
I asked the question on 26th September 2017 and this chap answered 2-days later on the 28th. Within the next 3-weeks, another 46No experts responded. All said the same thing: ‘This design doesn’t work – don’t do it’.
We are currently waiting for George’s opinion. Scotgov already has the opinion of an expert from Edinburgh but they are keeping that hidden for whatever reason. Will these opinions be any different to the opinion above? Let’s hope they are because if they are not, then 450No kids have been attending an unsafe school for the past 5-years.
In the scale of things, Boris’s flat refurbishment is nothing in comparison to this, is it?
There is another poll out today BTW:
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 21st-26th April 2021)
Yes 49%
No 51%
Before Don’t Knows are removed, the numbers are –
Yes 47%
No 48%
Undecided 6%
(1075 respondents were interviewed. The percentages add up to more than 100 due to rounding.)
Heather says:
Cavity? I meant vanity!!!
‘Cavity, cavity; all is cavity.’ (It could have worked.)
Sturgeon and her vile cabal will be as pleased as punch that the polls show indy support in a downward trend. she now has the that and the we must wait x a mount of years until the economy recovers from Covid, of which we know it won’t because Brexit has put paid to that.
Alex Salmond is the only FM with a track record on Scottish independence, he left Sturgeon on 45% all she needed was a 6% swing and Brexit gave her that, but she decided that she should try and save England from itself and not to save Scotland from this horrible one sided union.
Alex Salmond is the person that those seeking independence should be putting their trust in not Sturgeon, time will reveal this to the majority of the indy support, the big question is do we have the time with Westminster determined to roll back devolution.
Drove into Perth this pm and on the gable of a building was a big SNP yellow banner, obviously quite old. Added along the bottom of the banner was a second message “Vote ALBA as your second vote”. I’m paraphrasing a bit as I drove past but the message was clear.
Not all SNP members are unthinking clones! Here’s hoping there’s a lot more.
Until one of the parties places the economic and financial case before the Scottish electorate for scrutiny, Independence is 100% dead in the water.
Only the hard of thinking will vote for the unknown. Ms Sturgeon knows this and simply plays to the braindead and the romantics who lap it all up. However, the tide is turning against her, her husband!! and her spineless acolytes in the SG.
If I were to give any advice to Alex Salmond it would be that it is time to get down and dirty and expose Sturgeon for what she is. A Fraud and a dangerous one at that.
gullaneno4 says:
“Another list party by all means, I am all for that, but preferably not one led by Salmond.”
Hmm. That sounds remarkably like a cunning plan to march into battle while shunning the only general who actually has combat experience.
The news blackout on Salmond and ALBA suggests that he’s feared by the establishment on both sides of the border. If you can, name a preferable choice alternative leader of whom anyone will have heard.
Iain Lawson,
And theirin lys the problem don’t you think?
Why is mostly left up to a Scots blogger residing in Bath to get across what is happening in Scotland? I am quite sure AS has if he wanted to more resources than the Rev.
Everybody with any intelligence knows and has known what the MSM is and has been for some considerable time, but seem to miss the overall position by squabbling about whose biased against my/our position and thereby letting the barstewards of the hook.
I see (despite my biases towards Independance or not) Alex Salmond and Co to be honorable people with integrity, I feel the same about the owner of this blog, therefore why ((with limited exceptions) is the owner of this blog (with the added disadvantage in some peoples eyes of living in England) the only person who is “shouting from the rooftops” this cancer within Scotland which could have real devastating effects on Woman and Children especially and everyone generally?
What is he/they frightened off? I get the practical politics stuff, which in normal circumstances id go with, but these are surely not “normal circumstances ” and is a gamble on the aforementioned using them as “chips” for a proposition that is unknowable? If this was in a Risk Management Study dispassionately looking at the “Risk” where do you think it’d come out?
It appears to me that the Rev is doing the “heavy lifting” in exposing all of this with the potential beneficiaries hiding in plain sight and using the MSM inadequacies which if they come as a surprise to anyone they shouldn’t be in politics as cover.
I was brought up to believe that if you stand up to be counted on something as intrinsically important as these exposures are, and speak the truth not “my truth” as is the fashion, and lose in the short term or indeed forever if its not fixed your ultimate goal your a better person.
I should have typed: of whom most people would have heard.
They say, ‘Alba splitting the Indy vote!’ But you say they are only a list party, unlike the SGP who are standing against the SNP in the Constituency seats and will split the votes…But NS likes them, supports them in debates, and they both follow the same ‘woke’ policies. So that’s ok? Until the SGP demand more power and oppose the SNP?
They say, ‘Two votes SNP’, and no matter how much you point out that it’s a fallacy and will let more unionists in, they will say, ‘AS said to do it in 2014, what’s changed?’, and you tell them ‘There were no other pro-Indy parties to vote for in 2014’! And they continue to believe the smears against AS…
I always thought my fellow Scots were a canny lot…but this nonsense does my head in.
Who will take the blame when women and kids are attacked in their ‘safe legal spaces’, be it prisons, or refuges, while they continue to distort the EA’s? Or women losing their jobs for not kow-tailing to the new ‘gender pronoun’ politics? Do these people that believe in gender ‘woo woo’ politics grow up in ivory towers? Show me a women from any walk of life that has never felt fear when walking home at night! Show me a girl that never ran home to get away from a pack of adolescent boys. Girls have been raped and sexually assaulted in schools…yet now they want to introduce mixed sex facilities in schools? Women raped and sexually assaulted in ‘mixed’ prisons. Yet they try to tell us ‘women with dicks’ are safe? Biologically impossible, and as women we know different!
It’s all very ‘middle-class’ politics that is not based in reality! Get the crazy people out of schools and let kids be!
Harvie, another biological denier, comments re black women and disabled women being the same as trans women, is frightening. We were not given a choice…we are what we are!
To get back to the point, we probably won’t get Independence under this New SNP, not in it’s present form. Thankfully there are a few staying stumm holding the fort awaiting change. I only hope Alba get as many list seats as possible so they can hold these enforced crazy policies up to the light and watch them disappear as the public become aware and start questioning them. Unless the HCB gets to them first!
Oh well these polls won’t make any difference to the SNP inner circle and defiantly won’t raise a eyebrow ( suitably coloured and plucked ) to the weirdos in the Greens , because both of these parties don’t give a fk about Independence or what the electorate thinks.
Over in la la Land Alex is still public enemy No 1 as the piece pointed out he accomplished things that Sturgeon would have palpitations even thinking about we have went in reverse since 2014 in reverse and now at a dead halt and parked in some fkn Lay By ,
The supporters of princess Nicola and over the rainbow delusional arses on WGD remember on a good day they number 10 , that’s 10 muppets talking to themselves the conversation usually features That rat Salmond or the up start ALBA fk me , and all this to the clicking of the knitting needles fk way out of touch and hopping for a miracle fkn sad very sad
Doug says:
29 April, 2021 at 4:21 pm
Remember the Angry Salmond t-shirts The national made and sold? The one where Alex is wearing a pink beret. I’ve still got mine and was thinking about wearing it on Saturday when I stravaig doon Inverurie High Street.
A vote winner or a definite
REPLT
I would say a vote loser for ALBA at this time.
Hold off till after the election. wearing your T Shirt with that slogan may be of an advantage after Alex gets into Holyrood.
Don’t wear it before the 6th May. You will harm Alex & the ALBA party.
My theory as to why support for independence is falling is simply this: people are starting to wake up to what sort of country Scotland has become and they don’t like what they see. Under Sturgeon, free speech is already banned; satire has been outlawed (Craig Murray will explain) and tiny minority groups are currently dictating how the majority of the population should live their lives. Sensible folk can already see that if the SNP is given free rein to do as it pleases the situation will get even worse. Monitoring devices installed in every home and workplace? I wouldn’t rule it out with this authoritarian mob in charge.
I know I won’t be popular for saying this BUT a VAST amount of SNP members should share the blame for this continuing clusterfuck , they allowed and protected this lunatic to run riot in our country , any and all dissent or questioning the selfie queen’s actions were turned on rabidly by lots of SNP members , and many of us on here suffered from that especially the honourable writer of this blog, and one of the worst offenders is regaled as being the Oracle of the SNP
This cult of celebrity personality should never happen again as we are all seeing the absolute devastation it is causing and will cause to the independence movement . Alex Salmond is a giant within the political sphere ,he is a genuine son of Scotland who breathes independence , but he is NOT god and should never be considered infallible, we should never again allow the adoration and adulation of a politician to corrupt our government and the best interests of the SCOTTISH people
https://tinyurl.com/48v6pahk
Patrick Harvie on Sky
He just repeated what he said here:
https://tinyurl.com/m63xaetm
He needs to be asked about the reforms.
Rather than ask him what a woman is he needs to be asked what a transwoman is and if anyone can be a transwoman.
For what it’s worth (and from observing SNP since2002/3), SNP has a tendency to consistently underperform when you compare actual election results v polls. However I think this time SNP is in real trouble. I have not seen a drop in so many percentage points in such a short time. Of particular interest is the list voting percentages. I am not exactly sure but I think SNP has lost 10 points or more at this stage. I don’t belIeve this shifted to the Greens (at least not all of them) or the unionist parties (Labour perhaps), but most likely to Alba. Therefore I am not surprised if Alba manages to elect 6-8 MSPs.
witchy says: 5:17 PM
Girls have been raped and sexually assaulted in schools…yet now they want to introduce mixed sex facilities in schools?
reply
My goodness what has happened to Scotland. What I’m seeing here are people who should be in mental asylums getting treatment. Yet they’re out in the community causing havoc.
In my day we girls/women were safe in our streets no matter the time of day or night. Auld years night is an example. We were able to go first footing without feeling threatened. You’d meet a stranger on your travels & wish then a guid New Year, give them a kiss & think nothing of it.
You had an open house & invited strangers in. A guid new year was for wan an awe.
My goodness you wouldn’t beable to do this now with this trans climate. Bairns sleeping in their beds upstairs wouldn’t be safe.
I’m so sorry such a great tradition has been ruined with weirdos within Scotland. Is first footing dead in Scotland now?
@Ruby 5.50pm
It’s interesting that – at least as far as I have seen – not a single journalist has really pinned down any politician or activist parroting the TWAW/there is no debate mantra and forensically asked them to justify to the ordinary voter what the implications of that are. Harvie, Sturgeon and all their acolytes and online posses who are so adept at othering those they label transphobes and bigots for daring to disagree with them, are always allowed to divert from the real implications, to refuse/fail to answer direct questions.
Such people never “face the music” do they? I can only surmise that journalists as a whole are simply too scared of being cancelled and othered if they actually put these illiberal, regressive men’s rights activists to the question. The only ones I can recall even raising the fact that there is another side to the argument, that women’s rights need to be protected and might even be in competition with automatic self-ID and an uncritical acceptance of the ‘no debate’ bullying, are Many Rhodes, Ian Macwhirter and Kevin McKenna.
It’s not exactly a proud tradition of crusading journalists when from a country’s whole MSM you can count on one hand the number of principled journos who have stood up to the woke Stasi is it?
One-party states are never, ever, a good idea.
The SNP need serious opposition – as a Unionist I would prefer this to be from a unionist party. As a Democrat, I would be happy for any party to take them on regardless of their view on independence.
Indeed, an Alba opposition may force the arguments around the topic into the open and get some sensible answers (the border, currency, debt levels – stuff like that)
Captain Yossarian says:
29 April, 2021 at 4:47 pm
Regarding the school that’s sinking into the mud – perhaps we should start letting the dog see the rabbit?
Reply
Have the parents of this school stopped their kids from attending until things have been put right? If not why not?
Are they waiting for a catastrophe, maybe children dying before they do something. What are the parents doing?
Stuart says:
29 April, 2021 at 5:13 pm
Iain Lawson,
And theirin lys the problem don’t you think?
Reply
Stuart go over to Yours for Scotland. Iain Lawson is doing similar to what Stu is doing. You will get the link on the WOS site
@Kiwilassie – Someone wrote-in this morning and mentioned the beam that came out of its connection at Holyrood. You may remember that incident. I knew the chap who was blamed for that mistake and he was humiliated by all at Holyrood and asked to produce his Degree certificate and all the rest. He ended-up going to the Middle-East for 10-years to work. He just returned a year ago. Anyone who put the safety of MSP’s at risk; their career was as good as over.
As far as this school goes, all at Holyrood have known about it for more than 3-years and haven’t done anything. They had it checked in May 2018 by 4No of their own expert companies, but they have covered-up the results.
They have had it checked again 4-weeks ago by an expert husband and wife team from Edinburgh and they have covered-up these results too.
The latest check has been done at the behest of the UK Institution of Civil Engineers and it is by the best engineer we have in the country. He checked in 2-weeks ago and so the result is available. It is being withheld, presumably until after the Holyrood election.
I will post more of these opinions in the days ahead just to show everyone what a corrupt government we have at Holyrood. In any other country in the world, at least some of them would be in jail for this.
It’s a primary school. It was never going to work.
.
I am not to keen on placing all bets on polls, especially you new 6% and 11% YES margin.
Smells a bit fishy.
But with the sheer weight of evidence collated by Stuart Campbell, something seems afoot.
Many voters are now turned off politics.
Sturgeon getting what she wants with her new mantra being dusted off…
“I tried to get an SNP majority but Alex Salmond, Alba and the Bad Bloggers ruined everything”.
The MSM are punting all things pro-Sturgeon. Smells even rotten fisher.
90% of the uninterested electorate are eating up all of this MSM faux shite. This line where Nicola tried but was thwarted.
Whereas every Winger knows Nicola wants a minority government so she can kick IndyRef2 into the long grass and concentrate on her Trans obsession.
But in the long run, history wil not be kind to Sturgeon.
Queen Nicola will be Scotland’s Tony Blair.
Unmasked as a fraud, a liar and much worse.
Treated as an IndyRef2 killing tractor by the massed electorate in Scotland and as a pariah by those viewing Scotland from abroad.
I just hope that Alex Salmond gets elected as a Holyrood MSP.
Small consolation, but he will verbally eviscerate the over-promoted fraud of a fake FM that Sturgeon is at every single one of her FMQs until the point she is carted off by a new chief constable from AC12.
You see, life imitates art.
The Scttish actor, Martin Compston is one of the YES movement’s most fierce supporters. He will, in due course, be the next generation’s Sean Connery as far as well Kent faces of YES and our right to self-determination go.
9pm this coming Sunday night: watch our Martin Compston in Line of Duty and think of the current chief Constable of Police Scotland, Ian Livingstone. A chief that has presided over more “here’s a drink” dodgy cop brigade than anyone since the corrupt Met of the 1970s.
The truth will out.
I think it’s a combination of more people realising how corrupt Scotgov are allied to the dangers of all this Woke stuff. Do you want independence if it means a Woke Dominie on every street corner fining you for not making holes in your waterproof coat for your compulsory pronoun badge?
That sort of thing is a real prospect under Sturgeon.
Rikali – true
Stuart – thanks!
If you didn’t see my cartoon back in February, here it is again.
http://www.uncancelled.co.uk/cartoonist/is-the-dream-of-scottish-independence-being-poisoned/
Are the SNP try to outdo the England football team when it comes to penalties?
@Captain Yossarian says:
29 April, 2021 at 6:45 pm
Re the school, can the Health and Safety Executive not get involved?
Kiwilassie, thanks, but that doesn’t really answer my question, if you think about it. The question wasn’t around who is the best blogger or how much “heavy lifting” they respectfully do. Boiled down and I am sorry if it was interpreted as a competition for bloggers its why do bloggers such as Iain and the Rev “shout this stuff from the rooftops” and yet other people who assuredly feel the same don’t, even bearing in mind long known MSM biases and political expediency?
If they could explain to me at least why they on the whole, who I assume have far greater access to resources and more “pull” on the general public continue to keep so quiet on the serious issues that face Scotland whether Independant or not I’d maybe understand better.
@Beaker – They will only get involved if the City Council report it. They will not get involved if anyone else reports it. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the case.
Some Councils, Edinburgh City Council for example, are very tough. Remember when Edinburgh City Council closed 17 schools? Well this City Council are the opposite. They will do anything rather than close a school.
Poll after poll shows a comfortable majority for indy amount the under 45’s. Sturgeon’s genius strategy, therefore, has been to triangulate to the under 30’s – WHO ALREADY SUPPORT INDEPENDENCE IN VAST NUMBERS – by aping the Green party, whom they, or at least those of them who are for “Yes”, all vote for anyway in preference to the SNP. Come election time, the over-45’s start watching leader’s debates and the other stuff that passes for political engagement in our system, and forming up some concrete views on the state of politics. And that’s why we’re starting to see this shift from the Don’t Know camp into the No camp; because the over 45’s have realized that, yes, this independence malarkey is still not for the likes of us. Sturgeon doesn’t care, because the electoral and political status quo suits her fine – as all Wings readers understand. The challenge is to make the Nicla cultists of the SNP also understand.
“Queen Nicola will be Scotland’s Tony Blair.”
And is doubtless looking forward to amassing millions of pounds after she leaves office, just like Bliar has done.
Captain Yossarian:
Why not involve your MP?
And ask him/her to inquire of the HSE whether, if anything did go badly wrong at the school, they’d like it known that they’d ignored the concerns passed on by a Member of Parliament.
Stella says:
“If you didn’t see my cartoon back in February…”
I hadn’t seen that, Stella. Sums up the state of things pretty well.
I thought it was a stupid idea to have the Yes vote tied to one party (and therefore one party leader). All the eggs in one basket held by one person and millions depend upon it. Who thought this made sense?