Man paid to write article setting out his true beliefs – shock! « Better Nation. This page has been shared 76 times. View these Tweets. SECURITY WARNING: Please treat the URL above as you would your password and do not share it with anyone. In the latest round of silly season frothing for the Holyrood bubble, the No campaign and others have gotten their knickers in a twist about this – an article written by Elliot Bulmer for the Herald . Their beef with it, apparently, is that the Yes campaign paid him for his time and didn’t say so. Except they did say so when asked. 1. 2. 3.
Questions for Question Time. I normally object to political hacks objecting to media bias.
With the newspapers in particular, it always sounds like sailors complaining about the wind. But the BBC is a slightly special case. And Question Time is the most special case of all outside general election campaigns, because of its profile and because the balance is so easy to achieve. Diverse In Action. The independence movement is just that; a movement.
It is not a retailer of one narrative, or one coalescent ideology. It is a broad church peopled by persons of many political creeds, and none. Disagreements about post-independence policy are inevitable, and welcome. Why Scottish conservatives will decide the independence referendum. Not every election is black and white, unless you’re a Lib Dem in Pentland Hills. When you are beaten by a penguin in an election, you know you’ve had a bad night.
Equally, when a penguin is the biggest news story of the day, you know that an election hasn’t been terribly exciting. The story of the Scottish election, much like budget spending commitments, probably revolves around Glasgow. The SNP dreamed of an overall majority and had to endure that dream slipping from hoping for being the biggest party, through accepting Labour being the biggest party to the nightmare of yet another five years of Labour hegemony in Scotland’s largest city. It is testament of course to the SNP’s ambition, and Labour’s lack of therein, that national election results that see the current governing party winning the most council seats in the nation as a disappointment.
The SNP has overall control of Dundee and Angus, and made gains in Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Why I’m (re)joining the SNP. Democracy doesn’t run itself.
There’s a reason why political donations, like charitable giving, are tax deductible. The public has a vested interest in political parties being well populated and well funded. The more average Joe’s that sign up with direct debits, the less the Souters’ will be required to play a part. So I’ve never understood how so many people can be fleetingly interested in politics once every four years while still resentful that those very few that are constantly, consistently involved don’t just fix everything for them, the way they want. My preferred vision of an ideal country is for political parties to be chock full of engaged individuals, branch meetings to be lively affairs and candidate selections to be thorough and exciting.
What next for the SNP when they win the referendum? I’m feeling sunny and optimistic.
Let’s assume the question doesn’t get bogged down by the courts or by politics, that the Yes campaign is genuinely cross-party and no-party, that the public will get a chance to write the first constitution for an independent Scotland at some point, and that the referendum succeeds by a clear margin. The SNP will, on this happy day, have achieved their objective. Admittedly it’s in some ways a simpler objective than any other party – Scotland is either independent or not – but it’d be an extraordinary achievement for a party which in 2003 looked a long way from government, and as recently as the 1980s looked a whole lot further away still.
So what happens next, both for the SNP and for individual SNP members and politicians? Here are some options. Retire happy. Attempt to become Scotland’s answer to the ANC. Join other parties. Split into new parties. Should the handmaiden of independence not be a woman? The Greek and French elections have served to remind us that change remains the norm across Europe during these tough economic times.
The majority of change across Scotland at last week’s council elections typically went from SNP to Labour, despite the winning tallies being in the Nats’ favour: Labour calling the shots at Edinburgh Council, Labour making council formation difficult in Aberdeenshire and Labour preventing change at Glasgow Council. And, with the SNP losing a quarter of their voters from last year’s Scottish Parliament elections, Scots are certainly at least changeable. With two and a bit long years until the referendum on independence, and mid-term European elections to be held between now and then, there are good reasons why the SNP should pre-empt change before the electorate rejects out of hand the constitutional change that a male and potentially stale SNP leadership is offering: This entry was posted on May 10, 2012, 7:48 am and is filed under Constitution, Parties.
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