I WROTE THIS 3 YEARS AGO.

This is a post I wrote three years ago to the day. It was before Alba, it was before the Alex .Salmond trial. It was topical because just like today the SNP were suggesting a referendum was imminent. I was concerned then, as I am still today, that the SNP were doing nothing to advance the cause of Independence and ignoring two identified priority groups where there is huge potential to win much more support. I just wonder why they are being ignored? ONE thing is certain GRA and Hate Crime will lose, not win these votes. Again I ask why are these not the priorities? Is the plan to lose?

CONFUSED AND A LITTLE BIT CONCERNED. ( first published 18th April 2019)

I have always liked Andrew Wilson so it doesn’t sit easily to contest some of his ideas outlined in his latest outline on strategy advice which seems to set out as a priority a softly, softly approach designed to attract the support of the 330,000 people originally from England who voted No in 2014.

I have no problem having any strategy to attract more support for YES from any population group or subgroup of electors in Scotland but I see several much greater opportunities for conversion to YES from other groups which I am convinced would bring much greater return for yes than setting out a softly, softly, strategy to attract a group which I think, irrespective of how soft you can make it, will still be the most resistant to Independence to Scotland. That is not to say they are all hopeless cases, English Scots for Yes prove that but I think we all know that many of these people are tied to the British State and who see Independence as a threat to their British Status. These people are not low hanging fruit to the Yes campaign.

A much greater emphasis should be on two other groups both of whom, for much the same reasons, are the weak link in the BETTER TOGETHER attempts to hold onto the votes they got in 2014.

The first group is pensioners. They voted by almost two to one against Independence in 2014 largely because they were lied to and terrified by threats about losing their pension and we were frankly appalling at contesting and exposing those lies and scaremongering. I would be a lot happier to hear a lot more about what we are planning to do about the pensioners group NOW, because if we learned anything from 2014 we must know they were the hardest group to reach through social media and therefore the most vulnerable to the BT false propaganda, happily rammed down their throats by a compliant Unionist media machine. Unionism is vulnerable here, the U.K. State Pension is a national disgrace. A well publicised pledge to increase pensions in an Independent Scotland alongside a complete and sustained expose of how BT lied and misled them in 2014 could bring about big switches in support from NO to YES.

My second group is the Scots born who voted NO. 53% of people actually born in Scotland voted YES. Fair enough, but that means 47% voted no, many of whom were again terrified by the Unionist propaganda about being pulled out the EU, job losses in Shipbuilding, HMRC, ETC. Time has ensured that many must now see how false that narrative was and remains today. I estimate there are around 1.5 million people in this category, they must now be shown that voting NO did not save a single job, indeed by staying in the U.K. and now facing Brexit, despite Scotland voting overwhelmingly to remain a member of the EU, MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SCOTTISH JOBS ARE NOW AT RISK! Again BT are hugely vulnerable to a message that not only was their scaremongering completely false but that they ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SCOTS JOBS NOW BEING THREATENED BY BREXIT.

Now as I stated at the beginning of this post I have no objection to anyone working on strategy to bring across more people from No to YES but for the two big, important, vital groups I mention above a softly, softly message will not do. We need a challenging, strident message highlighting how angry both pensioners and Scots who voted No should be about being lied to by BT and making clear how much we would welcome them righting that wrong by moving to the YES side now.

You can be sure that BT and their Unionist media allies are not planning many softly, softly, strategies for Indyref2 they will be planning a media storm of old and new lies. It would serve us well if our strategy from now on actively sought to highlight how BT lied last time round urging people to be very wary indeed of all future messages from that source.

When I see action on these two vital groups I will be much more confident of a positive outcome on Indyref2.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

BEAT THE CENSORS

Sadly some sites had given up on being pro Indy sites and have decided to become merely pro SNP sites where any criticism of the Party Leader or opposition to the latest policy extremes, results in censorship being applied. This, in the rather over optimistic belief that this will suppress public discussion on such topics. My regular readers have expertly worked out that by regularly sharing articles on this site defeats that censorship and makes it all rather pointless. I really do appreciate such support and free speech in Scotland is remaining unaffected by their juvenile censorship. Indeed it is has become a symptom of weakness and guilt. Quite encouraging really.

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