I was actually writing a very patriotic and in depth article about this ( https://twitter.com/_ungagged/status/1157976219054485504?s=21 ). However my being mired in depressive nostalgia of my potential close ancestors “emigrating” was interrupted by a foul stench.
It started off innocuously, just a whiff of what the fuck. It escalated into me inviting my friend along to tut loudly at a local SNP branch meeting, and finally exploded in to an all-out ridiculous ejaculation of self owning, misinformation giving, glorious twitter weirdness. I don’t often get into critiquing things that are trending, I’ll tend these days to try and write some mildly amusing blog that I then send to Ungagged to publish. On occasion however, I get so annoyed and bemused, or bored and stuck in bed, and have to comment on stupid stuff. You know how it is. The internet. Idiots everywhere. You can’t have a big massive thread with hunners of comments and call that a conversation. As pointed out to me, it’s hunners of conversations in the form of angry typing on ThE iNtErNeT!
So here’s the basic script, without naming names and getting the screams of libel yelled at us. There’s this guy on the internet, who used to review auld Atari games or something. He started blogging about independence and “done good analysis”. He started to get a following, raised some cash and produced a wee paper back booklet of Pantone 300. So time passes and people laugh and joke, cos he’s a good guy. Then his jokes turn to pedantic semantics (which I’ll address in a moment) and making jokes about gay folk and dismissing claims of intolerance against other minorities. His legions of fans, cos he is so popular shouts Everybody is a Yoon/MI6/77th Brigade.
Projection much?
So this popular content producer, announces after the brexit fiasco and cos UDI isn’t happening yet, SNP are shite and now he’s gonna start his own political party. Never mind that he’s blocked everybody. Never mind he’s been to court and has to have another fundraiser. Never mind we’re aw blocked anyway. How is any of this conducive to the plight of independence? Do you call everybody a Yoon or an agent of the state and mock and joke of people who’s rights and opinions to be heard you are saying you are arguing for? Don’t use the term “legitimate concerns” and then not listen to somebody who has experience in that bit of whatever obscure societal problem you are worrying aboot. Don’t say you are a feminist and then argue against equality. Don’t slag off Byres Road Bourgeois then listen emphatically to a guy from Bath, a place so Proletarian it’s like Embra Fringe on steroids, every day of the week, every roman calendar lunar cycle. Aw naw, I just leaked who I was talking about. Let me come back to Pedantic Semantics. It’s this thing that’s happening the now, like the well actuallying of mankind. I purposefully use Man there, cos it’s mostly men who do it. However women are not exempt from being pricks.
What we need though is a massive wave of women to come bounding on over to supporting independence. It has to be a safe and welcoming space for everyone. We need diverse representatives to really fulfil our full potential as a new nation. And offering wild semantic specific arguments with condescending tones and low flavours of bullshit has not, will not and never in the short time we have left on this planet, ever convince anybody of anything. Please don’t offer your support to charlatans. Offer it to us, @_ungagged has the best remedies, one bottle of this magic oil cures all your woes…
I don’t disagree with your piece, but leaving aside the social issues and sticking to the cold mathematics, the Bath blogger has a point. In 2016 the SNP got nearly 1M list votes which gave them only 4 seats: essentially 800,000 votes were wasted. The simplistic message of SNP 1 & 2 does not maximise the pro-independence representation. Some people got that, and gave their second vote to the Greens which allowed a pro-independence government to survive. But the Greens have many other policies beside independence, some of which have caused the SNP government difficulty.
IMHO there is a place for single issue (independence) candidates standing for all list seats. I believe the best route for this should be from the grassroots Yes movement, rather than an internet blogger. The latter’s best role would be to publicise that next election the best way to maximise pro-independence representation is to vote 1. SNP 2. Yes to Independence (or whatever).
The SNP response to this row was to say that since we will have indyref2 before the 2021 elections it’s all a bit academic. Not so, there is a real danger. Let’s assume we get and win indyref2 next year. A period of negotiations between the Scottish and UK governments will follow lasting at least 18 months, very possibly longer. The 2021 elections will take place in the middle of this. If the Unionist parties chose to game the system by only standing one candidate for each constituency seat, but all standing for each list seat they would probably increase their constituency elections and the non constituency represented parties would scoop up list seats. A Unionist majority would then be a distinct possibility, meaning a Unionist coalition government taking over the independence negotiations – which would be abandoned.