‘Tis the season

 Christmas and the New Year are almost upon us. I hope that in 2022 the independence movement can put the arguments and disputes of the past couple of years behind us and focus on the momentous task ahead – building a solid majority for an independent Scotland.  As we move into next year the campaign for independence will be ramping up a gear and later in 2022 Holyrood will start to make preparations for a referendum in 2023.  The most important thing that we can do as ordinary punters is to work to ensure that when the Scottish Parliament makes moves towards a referendum that it is backed up by the support of a clear majority of the population.  That means taking the fight to where it really belongs, showing up the hollow nature of the positions of Labour and the Lib Dems, and the immense threat that the corrupt Conservatives pose to our civil liberties, the very future of the Scottish Parliament, and to democracy itself.  That is going to be the priority of this blog in the coming months.

However in the short term, things are quietening down as we enter the holiday period. As regular readers know, my health has not been great of late.  Sadly recovery from a major stroke is not all onwards and upwards. In order to be ready for next year, I’m going to take the next couple of weeks off to enjoy the holidays, and to rest and recuperate at home. I hope that you all have a wonderful time over Christmas and the New Year and that you and your loved ones stay safe and healthy.  I’ll be back, recharged and ready for the year ahead, in the New Year.  See you all then!

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The Tories are revolting

So now we know that there is indeed a line in the proverbial sand which Boris Johnson must not cross as it will provoke Conservative back benchers into open revolt. At least now when we say that Conservative MPs are revolting the Tories will be forced to agree with us even though certain Conservative politicians have been revolting ever since they first slimed their way into public life, Stephen Kerr springs to mind, for no particular reason.

The revolting Conservatives tried to dress up their revolt as a matter of great principle, but what has finally got their goat about the serial liar and entitled man-child that is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson isn’t all his lies and deceit. Johnson’s willingness to treat the truth as a minor trifle which can easily be ignored when it proves inconvenient for Johnson and the Conservative party was one of the reasons that they elected him as leader, they are all equally culpable in his lies so it’s not like they’re going to find some scruples about them any time soon.

They are not even suddenly upset about the close to 150,000 deaths from covid that the UK has endured, many of which could have been avoided had Johnson done his job and taken prompt and decisive action in the early phases of the pandemic. Neither have the revolting Tories been driven to action through disgust at the constant sleaze and corruption which envelops the Johnson regime, they too are complicit in all that.

Although the Commons chamber yesterday was filled with the self righteous pontificating by revolting Tories about civil liberties and freedoms, its not that they are appalled by the open assault on human rights which this government is embarking on, most of them support stripping human rights from refugees and migrants, and they are equally keen to see the back of protections for our employment rights, all the better to assist in the enrichment of that small minority which can offer lucrative side gigs to present or former Conservative MPs.

Neither do they care about the way in which Johnson is neutering the few checks and balances which a British constitution that isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on places on the absolute power of the occupant of Downing Street and Johnson’s moves to place himself and his cronies above the law and beyond meaningful scrutiny or accountability while adopting voter suppression measures that target demographic groups which tend not to vote Tory . All the better to entrench Conservative rule, no matter that these anti democratic measures represent a dangerous step towards authoritarianism. In this as in everything else the revolting Tories are defined by their over-riding concern for their own self interest.

The only human rights and civil liberties that Tory MPs care about is the right of rich and privileged people like themselves and their absolute right not to be mildly inconvenienced by having to wear a face covering in Waitrose which makes it somewhat less risky for any members of the lower orders that they might cough on.

There was the usual Anglo-British hyperbole about Nazi Germany and WW2, which once again proved the point that those who are most likely to harp on about the sacrifices and suffering that people in the UK – they never mention the sacrifices and suffering of anyone else – endured in order to defeat the tyranny of the Nazis are precisely those who are most likely to whine and complain about any minor inconveniences that they themselves are called upon to suffer in order to benefit the greater good.

For all their talk of the authoritarianism of being asked to show papers in order to gain admission to a sporting or entertainment event, few of the revolting Tories who are now so exercised about civil liberties all of a sudden seemed to be aware of the important distinction between a covid pass and a vaccine passport.

According to the British Medical Journal, a vaccine passport is a document or app which shows evidence of the person’s vaccination status only, whereas a covid pass is a document or app which shows evidence that a person has either a lower risk covid status based on their vaccination record, has recently had a negative lateral flow or PCR test, or has had a positive antibody test (showing that they had the infection previously and have some level of immunity).

Luckily for them, none of the sook up six of Scotland’s own contribution to the cant and hypocrisy on the Conservative benches had to rapidly evolve a backbone on this occasion. As MPs were debating a measure which only affected England, Scottish MPs did not vote.

In the end almost 100 Tory back benchers displayed the true depths of their party’s shameless hypocrisy and voted against some limited and partial measures to protect public health in the face of the rapid spread of a concerning new variant of the virus. We had the usual displays of gob smacking idiocy from the Brextremists whom Johnson has decided that it’s a political imperative to pander to. The ever absurd Andrew Bridgen opined that trying to suppress the spread of the omicron variant was dangerous because it might then mutate into something more lethal, thus displaying the same insight into epidemiology that he brought to the debate about Europe. Meanwhile his fellow Brexidiot Steve Baker wondered why if the new variant was indeed so concerning why was the government only introducing such limited restrictions. Steve apparently hadn’t considered the possibility that it might be because of the difficulty in getting morons like him and his pal Andrew to support more rigorous restrictions.

The measures passed thanks to Labour support but yesterday’s events in the Commons were an abject lesson in the intellectual and moral poverty of a Conservative party that seeks to entrench its power and what it regards as its god given right to rule. This is the same party whose selfish idiocy stands in the way of the Scottish Government’s efforts to tackle the virus. The Scottish Government would like to have gone further than Johnson has done but Westminster jealously guards the purse strings.  We can only be safe from the Conservatives when Scotland removes itself from Westminster rule. Then we will only have to suffer the likes of Steve Baker determining our public policy if we are foolish enough to vote for him ourselves.

I have been in a lot of pain and discomfort this past week, so much so that I am having difficulty walking and am experiencing a lot of fatigue and exhaustion. Unfortunately I am not operating at full capacity and consequently won’t be able to get new blog pieces online as frequently as I would like to. I have also been told that it is unlikely that I will ever regain sufficient sensation and control in my left hand to be able to use it for tasks requiring fine motor control.  I’m going to have to learn how to write with my right hand. As someone who was very dominantly left handed before the stroke, that’s going to be a challenge. But needs must.

 

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The existential choice before us

It’s clear that the second Scottish independence referendum, which the Scottish Government is committed to delivering within the term of this Scottish Parliament, is going to be very different in character from the first. Although the independence cause ultimately failed to get over the 50% threshold in the referendum of September 2014, the campaign scored some significant and lasting victories upon which which the campaign in front of us is able to build.

One of the most important of these victories, was the seismic achievement of changing the Scottish political landscape in a fundamental way. The victory of the Better Together campaign was a Pyrrhic one, which has seen the annihilation of the Labour party in Scotland and the destruction of its former position of dominance. Far from making the independence issue go away as Labour and its Tory allies so fondly hoped, the narrow defeat of the Yes campaign in 2014 did not result in a return to the Scottish politics of the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century. Quite the opposite, the issue of independence is now central to Scottish politics, indeed it has become the dominant issue around which all other issues revolve.

As we approach a second referendum what this means is that the question of independence has established itself as a serious and realistic prospect in the Scottish population at large, even amongst those who do not themselves support it. This gives the Yes campaign a huge advantage as it no longer needs to work to establish the idea of independence as a plausible reality in the face of anti-independence parties and a media which was keen to dismiss the idea out of hand as a Scotch pie in the sky which had no basis in the real world. We now live in a Scotland which opinion polling has repeatedly confirmed that most people believe is ultimately destined for independence. This figure is consistently higher than the number who currently support independence, which means that a small but significant section of those who oppose independence believe that theirs is ultimately a lost cause.

However there are also dangers here for the Yes campaign. As the 2014 campaign got underway the Better Together campaign and the London-centric media were characterised by a deep rooted arrogance, their unshakeable belief in British exceptionalism meant that they airily dismissed the independence movement and confidently predicted a crushing victory of 75% or more for opponents of independence. The narrowness of the final result shook them to the core, and goes a long way to explaining the anger and resentment that Anglo-British nationalism in Scotland has displayed ever since.

Another major difference between 2014 and now is that the Anglo-British opponents of independence will struggle to frame the independence referendum campaign as a choice between Scottish nationalism on the one hand, with all the emotionally loaded baggage which the word nationalism carries, and non-nationalism on the other. Brexit and the union flag fetish of the Conservatives, their rank xenophobia and constant appeals to a Great British nostalgia have laid bare the regressive and reactionary Anglo-British nationalism of the Westminster parties, above all the Conservatives, and even with the assistance of a willing media have made it much harder for them to peddle the foundational delusion of Anglo-British nationalism, that it is better than the nationalisms of lesser nations like Scotland by virtue of not being nationalist at all. We see through that deluded fairy story all too clearly now.

The next referendum will not present a false choice between Scottish nationalism and a fake non-nationalism, but rather must be framed as a choice between whether Scotland is best served by a destiny chosen for it by the Anglo-British nationalists like Alister Jack, who by his own admission does not even like to acknowledge the existence of Scotland as a distinct country in its own right, and who seeks to subsume Scotland into a unitary and centralised British nation state, or by a destiny chosen by the people of Scotland and a government answerable to the people of Scotland and no one else.

Effectively the choice before us in the next independence referendum is a starkly existential question. Do you want Scotland to continue as a distinct country and nation, making its own contribution to the world on its own terms, or are you content to see Scotland erased as a meaningful polity and country and reduced to a historic region of a unitary and centralised British nation state, with no more political significance, modern identity, or ability to frame its own public policies, than Mercia or Wessex. Because make no mistake, that is the future that the Conservatives have in mind for us, and which they will not hesitate to make a reality once they are no longer constrained by the prospect of another Scottish independence referendum.

One of the marked characteristics of the 2014 campaign was the “happy clappy” nature of the Yes campaign and its determination to focus exclusively on making a positive case for independence and to avoid talking about the risks that Scotland faced if it rejected independence. Brexit and this irredeemably corrupt Conservative government with its clear trajectory into authoritarianism and the neutering and destruction of democratic safeguards has changed all that. In the coming campaign we must highlight the immense dangers that Scotland faces if it is foolish enough to reject independence a second time.

There can be no question this time round of Gordon Brown’s federalist fantasy. The Conservatives will take a defeat for independence as a green light to embark upon an all out assault on the devolution settlement and the powers of the Scottish Parliament. They will certainly take steps to ensure that Scotland cannot have any more referendums and will have no compunction about transforming the UK from a voluntary union of nations into a union based upon compulsion, making a third referendum unlawful and removing the right of the people of Scotland to determine for themselves the form of government best suited to their needs.

In the next referendum we must highlight that the choice before us is either independence or Scotland ceasing to exist in any politically meaningful way, as nothing more than one of Alister Jack’s regions with a quaint dialect and a colourful past, just a pretty tartan bow on a Great British shortbread tin.

I have been in a lot of pain and discomfort this past week, so much so that I am having difficulty walking and am experiencing a lot of fatigue and exhaustion. Unfortunately I am not operating at full capacity and consequently won’t be able to get new blog pieces online as frequently as I would like to. I have also been told that it is unlikely that I will ever regain sufficient sensation and control in my left hand to be able to use it for tasks requiring fine motor control.  I’m going to have to learn how to write with my right hand. As someone who was very dominantly left handed before the stroke, that’s going to be a challenge. But needs must.

 

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

In Tory Britain you never know what will happen yesterday

To say that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s attitude to the laws, norms and standards that are expected of the rest of us is casual is a bit like saying that a distant cousin who turns up for your grandmother’s funeral naked except for a gimp mask and some glittery body paint on the cheeks of his arse spelling out the words “tradesman’s entrance” is a tad under-dressed.

There have been numerous instances of Johnson acting as though all laws and regulations have an additional caveat which says : Does not apply to Boris Johnson if he finds it inconvenient. We saw him wandering about a hospital in the north of England not wearing a face covering despite the rule that everyone who sets foot in a medical establishment must wear a face covering in order to protect any immuno-compromised patients or people with underlying medical conditions who may be at higher risk from covid. Of course none of this bothered a hair on Johnson’s artfully tousled head. It appears that to him any risk to other people paled into insignificance compared to the trauma he would suffer by having to put a piece of cloth over his lying mouth for a few minutes.

Just a few days later he again refused to wear a face covering while attending a London theatre for a performance of a Shakespearean play. I don’t think that the Bard of Stratford upon Avon ever wrote a play titled ‘Tis the Twelfth Night Thou Hast Forsaken the Masque upon Thy Visage, but if he did it would have been a tragedy about a Tyrant who willfully put his subjects at risk of infection during an outbreak of the Plague while the news pamphlets and town criers looked on indulgently.

The latest instance of blatant rule breaking is the furor over the Christmas party at Downing Street last year at a time when such gatherings were prohibited by law. Indeed the Home Secretary Priti Patel, whom no one has ever confused with a ray of sunshine, said when the regulations to curb the spread of the virus came into force that she would call the police if her neighbours were hosting a party that broke coronavirus restrictions. Patel has been notable for her silence now that we know that, despite Johnson’s increasingly implausible denials, a staff Christmas party took place at Downing Street. A video obtained by ITV News showed Number 10 staff joking about the party which they admitted was not socially distanced. The leak of the video comes after days of Johnson denying that a party had taken place.

Johnson has been forced to apologise, saying that he was “furious” when he saw the video. You bet he was, he was furious that he’d been found out.

Of course Priti Patel herself had no knowledge of the party at the time, you don’t invite Priti Patel to a party unless your idea of a party game includes stoning migrants or finding novel ways to make a refugee’s life more difficult. Mind you if they had invited her their denials that a party had taken place would have been more plausible. The mere presence of the Home Secretary is guaranteed to destroy anything approaching a party atmosphere.

Patel is not alone in going into hiding from the press. All government ministers have cancelled their scheduled press appearances and Scotland’s spineless Conservative MPs have all gone to ground, which given the fact that they’re all supine at least means they didn’t have far to go. Mind you it is entirely possible that Andrew Bowie has put in a media appearance, it’s just that no one recognises him with the smirk wiped off his face.

This latest unedifying episode in a string of unedifying episodes comes just after the news came out that Johnson is seeking to introduce a measure which would allow the government to retrospectively annul any court rulings which ministers disagreed with, for which read politically embarrassing or uncomfortable. Johnson wants to give himself a literal Get Out of Jail card and give himself the power to retroactively change laws that the government doesn’t like. As they used to say in the Soviet Union when recorded history was altered at the whim of the party and undesirable events were airbrushed out of existence, you never know what will happen yesterday. Johnson is determined to give himself the same power and to give himself an actual caveat in all laws and regulations which says that they don’t apply to Boris Johnson if he finds it inconvenient.

Plans have been drawn up by Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and Attorney General Suella Braverman at the behest of the Prime Minister. The plans will allow for a so-called “Interpretation Bill” to be passed by the Commons on an annual basis, allowing the Government to summarily dismiss any court rulings they did not like from that particular year.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to tyranny and autocracy. Neither is this an isolated measure. The Conservatives are already intent on introducing voter suppression methods with their Elections Bill. These measures will disproportionately affect groups which tend not to support the Conservatives. Additionally the Johnson regime has made it clear that it intends to do away with the Human Rights Act.

Other anti-democratic measures from this government include severe restrictions on the right of protest. The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill has been described as the most oppressive legislation tabled by a British government since the end of the second world war. The Bill potentially bans any effective protests, pickets or any other kind of action in places “such as” roads, railways, ports, airports, oil refineries and printing presses.

The Bill does not formally affect Scotland as crime and justice are devolved matters, however given Johnson’s willingness to intervene directly in Scotland and to by pass and undermine the devolution settlement, that is scant comfort. The UK is now at that critical point where it is about to slide into full blown authoritarianism, presided over by an entitled clown. There is nothing in what passes for a British constitution which is able to prevent an unprincipled and amoral Prime Minister who commands a large majority in the Commons from doing exactly as he pleases. It is now clear that democracy in Scotland can only be safe once this country regains its independence. Otherwise we’ll be stuck in a Brexit Britain where you never know what will happen yesterday.

I have been in a lot of pain and discomfort this past week, so much so that I am having difficulty walking and am experiencing a lot of fatigue and exhaustion. I have a physiotherapy appointment on Thursday and an occupational therapy appointment on Monday, so unfortunately I am not operating at full capacity and consequently won’t be able to get new blog pieces online as frequently as I would like to.  I have a physiotherapy appointment tomorrow so there will be no new blog tomorrow. I have also been told that it is unlikely that I will ever regain sufficient sensation and control in my left hand to be able to use it for tasks requiring fine motor control.  I’m going to have to learn how to write with my right hand. As someone who was very dominantly left handed before the stroke, that’s going to be a challenge. But needs must.

 

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Westminster’s orchard of poison apple trees

The recent opinion poll from IPSOS-Mori for STV was a huge boost for hopes for independence, putting support for independence on 55% and giving a clear lead to independence support in every age group in the country except the over 55s. The poll even shows a majority for Yes when don’t knows are included. This poll comes after a run of polls which have given a narrow lead to opposition to independence, leading apologists for Westminster to dismiss it as a rogue poll which does not accurately reflect the true position on the ground. This poll is significant however, and cannot be dismissed so easily despite the hopes of British nationalists because it is the first telephone poll in a very long time. All the other polls have been online polls which perforce have a very different methodology. Time will tell which polling company has got it right.

What it does tell us, and in the most resounding way possible, is that the oft repeated assertions by anti-independence politicians and commentators that support for independence is declining cannot be substantiated and can be dismissed as fond hopes and attempts at wish fulfillment rather than facts. A massive 80% of people in Scotland say that they are dissatisfied with the performance of a Prime Minister who leads a party which is constantly mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption and who repeatedly demonstrates a casual contempt for the standards of behaviour expected of the rest of us. Across the UK three-quarters of the public are concerned about corruption in government, including seven in 10 of 2019 Conservative voters, according to recent polling. In Scotland just a mere 10% of the public think that the ruling party of British Government does not give the impression of being sleazy and disreputable.

Under such circumstances, and amidst such widespread dissatisfaction the so-called Union cannot in any way be described as safe. There is one thing we know for certain about Conservative corruption scandals. While the British Government aided by a media which prefers to look the other way will do its utmost to move public attention away from this story, nothing meaningful will change and some new Conservative sleaze scandal will come along later.

It should be clear by now that sleaze and corruption in the Conservative party is not the limited aberration of a few bad apples, it is a property of the entire Westminster orchard. Those aren’t apple trees, they’re sleaze trees growing entitlement and privilege.

From a royal family which erases the line between public and private for the personal enrichment of its members and which is treated with a sycophantic deference which places it beyond any accountability to an unelected and undemocratic House of Lords which is a machine for patronage and a House of Commons which awards absolute power to a party which can win even less than 40% of the popular vote and a Prime Minister who suffers few effective checks on his or her authority, the Westminster system is designed to perpetuate the privilege and entitlement of the few over the many. Corruption and sleaze are not unfortunate occasional lapses in this system, they are what it is designed to facilitate.

Expecting Westminster to take effective action to crack down on the sleaze and corruption of senior members of the Conservative party and to introduce meaningful checks and balances on the power of the Prime Minister, never mind democratic reform of the House of Lords or cutting down to size the bloated entitlement and greed of members of the House of Windsor is like expecting the most narcissistic vampire to take up veganism and then not to remind you every five minutes that they’re a vegan. It’s simply alien to the nature of the beast.

As supporters of Scottish independence, one of the most crucial messages for us to get out to the people of Scotland is that meaningful and lasting change is only possible with independence. If we want to live in a country which is truly democratic and where everyone is held to account equally, there’s only one way we are going to get it. Under Westminster we are condemned to a perpetual Groundhog day of Westminster sleaze and corruption stories which are met with promises of reform which are carefully calibrated to placate the media and to take the heat off the government of the day and solve its short term political embarrassment but which have no meaningful effect at all.

The Tories are easily the worst offenders but the intrinsic corruption of Westminster infects all parties who attain control of Parliament. The Labour Government of Tony Blair was no stranger to allegations of corruption and the selling of peerages to party donors.

Fundamentally the issue of Scottish independence is about democracy and accountability and ensuring that those who have the powers to change our laws, make public policy and determine the path that this country takes are answerable to and led by the people of Scotland. The Westminster Parliament with its carefully constructed veneer of democracy is designed to ensure the perpetuation of entitlement, privilege and inequality. It has had several hundred years of practice at co-opting and neutralising any radical or democratic threat to the ability of a small minority who are well-connected to continue to enrich themselves and to arrogate to themselves the ability to direct public policy and the course of the state. It is a system which has well-developed mechanisms designed to protect it from the threat of reform. The current public outrage about Conservative corruption will go the same way as all the other bouts of public anger about corruption and sleaze in the British establishment – nowhere.

The message of independence is a message of change and a message of hope. We can live in a better country. We can replace the weary cynicism generated among the public by Westminster as a self-defence mechanism with a realistic vision of a country where public office is not a route to private enrichment and where the priority of those in power is the common good not personal gain. It’s a better country which is within our grasp, all we need is the courage and confidence to grasp it and to root out for good the poison apple trees that constitute Westminster orchard of greed and privilege.

I have been in a lot of pain and discomfort this past week, so much so that I am having difficulty walking and am experiencing a lot of fatigue and exhaustion. I have a physiotherapy appointment on Thursday and an occupational therapy appointment on Monday, so unfortunately I am not operating at full capacity and consequently won’t be able to get new blog pieces online as frequently as I would like to.

 

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

A convincing victory for independence is within our grasp

The opinion poll carried out by IPSOS Mori for STV which was published on Wednesday could not have come at a better time. Just a couple of days after the First Minister announced that campaigning for independence would ratchet up a gear in the New Year and that preparations would get underway later in 2022 for a second independence referendum in 2023, we have an opinion poll showing that support for independence is currently sitting at 55%, the mirror image of the outcome of the 2014 referendum which produced a 55% vote against independence, a result which the BBC at the time described as convincing. Significantly, the lead for yes produced in this poll is greater than the 3% margin of error which is standard in opinion polling. It is perhaps also significant that this is the first telephone poll we have seen in a good while.

This week’s poll is a fantastic and perfectly timed boost to the campaign announced by the First Minister, and ensures that soor faced British nationalists like Douglas Ross will be seen to be only speaking for themselves and the members of a Livingston flute band, and not Scotland as a whole when they claim that Scotland doesn’t want another referendum.

The poll also showed that the SNP’s domination of the Scottish political landscape continues unabated, and indeed is only strengthening, mostly at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives. A seat projection for Holyrood based on this poll would see an increase in SNP and Green representation with the SNP comfortably attaining an outright majority by themselves.

Wednesday’s poll was in fact the second in a week to vindicate the Scottish Government and the First Minister, another recent poll found that 53% in Scotland want a second independence referendum within the term of this Scottish Parliament. Not only do most people in Scotland want another referendum, but even as the campaign proper just starts to begin in earnest, we already have majority support for independence. Right now we are about as far out from the second referendum as we were from the first when Alex Salmond announced in March 2013 that the referendum would be held on 18 September 2014. during that eighteen month period determined and focused campaigning on the part of independence supporters took support for independence from the low 30s percentile to the 45% achieved on the day of the referendum.

We now have another eighteen months in which to repeat some concerted campaigning which will serve to focus minds on the issue of independence and hopefully to repeat the substantial gains in independence support seen in 2013-14, only crucially this time we are starting from a much higher baseline. Even if Wednesday’s poll was an outlier, we now have substantial polling evidence to demonstrate that support for independence is favoured by at least half, and quite possibly more, of the population of Scotland. That is an exceptionally strong position from which to launch a campaign, particularly since the Conservatives have spent the last few years methodically destroying many of the arguments deployed by the Better Together campaign in 2014.

A lot can happen in eighteen months. Nothing should be taken for granted, and it is likely to prove difficult to increase support for independence by the approximate 15% which it increased between 2012/13 and the September 2014 vote. Most people in Scotland have now got at least a passing familiarity with independence arguments, which wasn’t the case before the 2014 vote. The concept of Scottish independence is no longer the novelty that it once was. This is of course potentially an advantage as much as a possible weakness as it means that whether you support it or oppose it, the idea of Scottish independence now has to be taken seriously, which means that more people are likely to give it serious thought and consideration. Only that minority of Scottish opinion which is wedded to the Conservative party will now dismiss it out of hand.

However since the notion of Scottish independence is now very much a mainstream idea in Scottish politics, that means it is likely that those of us campaigning for a yes vote are going to encounter more people who have already made up their minds one way or the other. Yet if we can achieve even one half of the persuasive success achieved between 2012/13 and the first independence referendum, that means that we could potentially win the next referendum with a vote in the high 50s percentile, which the BBC would probably call an indecisive result on the narrowest of margins. It is certainly possible that we could do even better.

One of the most interesting features of opinion polling about Scottish independence is that the percentage which says that they believe independence is going to happen eventually is consistently higher than the percentage which says that they themselves support independence. This can only mean that there is a small but significant body of those who are currently opposed to independence who believe that theirs will go down in history as the losing side. This points to considerable fear and uncertainty on a British nationalist side with low morale and a deep seated lack of conviction in the ability of the British state defeat Scottish independence.

While we must never underestimate the willingness of those who fear their backs are against the wall to fight dirty, the simple fact is that in order to see off Scottish independence as a political force, British nationalists in Scotland must break out of their red white and blue Brexit admiration society, the quandary that the Tories face is that the more they resort to an anti-democratic denial of the mandate for a referendum which the Scottish electorate gave Holyrood in May, the harder it becomes for them to win the support of those in Scotland who do not prioritise a British identity above all other considerations and who are not opposed to Scottish independence under all and any circumstances.

For our part, as independence supporters we need to focus on the prize, and put all our efforts into highlighting the irredeemable dysfunction and corruption of Westminster and reaching out to those who have yet to be persuaded of the case for independence. That is exactly what this blog will be doing over the coming months.  A Yes vote of approaching 60% is within our grasp. We just need the determination and drive to reach for it.

Just to let you know, I am currently going through a phase of what my physiotherapist calls neurological hypersensitivity. Nerves and sensation are starting to reawaken on the left side of my body, however because my brain has had no input from the left for many months and because the relevant parts of the brain suffered damage in the stroke, the brain is interpreting these signals as pain.  It’s uncomfortable and exhausting but it is a sign of progress and therefore is good news.  Hopefully my brain will relearn what these signals really mean and the pain will diminish and I will have meaningful sensation.  However in the meantime it’s causing a lot of fatigue and exhaustion as well as pain, so I will be blogging less frequently until symptoms settle down.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

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