LETTER OF THE WEEK.

This letter was written by Ann Williamson, a regular reader of the Yours for Scotland blog.

Good Morning, The National Editorial Team

Thank you for the offer of 3months subscription to The National for £1. I will not be taking up your offer.

When my late husband and myself started to subscribe to The National, it was the newspaper of the whole Independence movement. We looked forward to the wide range of views and discussions which the paper afforded us on a daily basis. Indeed, I myself have contributed letters on occasion, which you have kindly published. In latter years, it has I believe, following subsidies from Nicola Sturgeon, become the paper of the “woke” faction of the SNP.

Just in the past two days, you have distanced the paper from Alex Salmond and and the Alba party, have dispensed with Tasmina Ahmed Sheik’s contributions and appointed more of the said faction as journalists. Along with many others, I am upset about that editorial decision. The YES movement is a broad church, but what we are seeing, with some of the recent appointments made by The National, is the narrowing of the content to promote the minority GRR agenda and overt bias in favour of the Nicola and Peter party.  

You send me daily tasters of the full content of your paper, which you may continue to send or not. However, be assured, I have no intention of subscribing to your paper not even free of charge, I am so disappointed in what it has become. 

If you are trying to increase your readership as things have become “tight” for you in recent times, take my word for it, these heavily Sturgeon biased and gender political appointments are not what ordinary YES movement readers want to read or pay for. It’s over. The game’s up for them and I believe SNP will pay a heavy price in future elections – as unfortunately will the Independence movement, having put our trust in the SNP under the Sturgeon reign for eight unfruitful years.

I am in favour of a good clean out of the SNP as proposed by Ash Regan and the use of the gold standard ballot box to achieve independence. It is the only way forward for the movement. Even Michael Russell, president of SNP and not an extremist in any shape or form, attests to this. It is Ash’s intention to unify the movement, not stifle it as has been done by the dictatorship at the top of SNP. I’m sorry if you have bound yourselves into a losing ideology. Like the rest of us, no doubt the direction of travel you have chosen will cost you dearly. I hope I am wrong.

Ann Williamson 

MY COMMENTS

I cannot for the life of me understand what the National were doing making public an editorial decision that frankly makes no sense commercially. The SNP is and has been losing members. Thousands of those members, not all, have joined other parties. Singling out the Former First Minister for “special” treatment is also stupid. It reinforces a barrier which many already recognise as unfair and unjustified. Mr Salmond was an extremely good First Minister and advanced Scotland across the board. To this day the current Scots Government try to claim the credit for measures that were introduced BEFORE they came to power. It is no longer even contestable that he did not suffer a corrupt orchestrated plot created by many leading figures in the SNP, which failed because of the good sense of a Scottish jury who rejected the flimsy and contrived “evidence”. I view with disgust the continued efforts to smear him for political reasons. That the National chose to continue this biased behaviour confirms the paper as of little or no worth to the cause of Scottish Independence. How a publication that started off with such goodwill amongst the YES community has fallen to the point where it is now largely ignored and regarded as a Woke fanzine, suggests it has no future, no future at all.

I am, as always

YOURS FOR SCOTLAND

BEAT THE CENSORS

Regretfully there are some among us who seek to censor what others read. Sadly within the YES movement there are sites which claim to be pro Indy but exist to only promote one Party and will not publish articles which come from bloggers who don’t slavishly support that Party to the exclusion of the rest of the YES movement. I ask readers who support free speech to share articles from Yours for Scotland as often as possible as this defeats the effectiveness of the censors.

FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS

Free subscriptions are available on the Home and Blog pages of this site. This allows,for an email of each article to your Inbox and that is now how several thousands get my articles each day. This avoids problems that some have experienced gaining access from Twitter and Facebook. You will be very welcome to choose whatever route works best for you.

SALVO

The work and important development of Salvo has been a beacon of hope in 2022 and as it develops Salvo is creating campaigning hubs throughout Scotland. Salvo will join  with Liberation.Scot and as the campaigning arm of Liberation we are looking at very effective campaigns kicking off very early this year and introducing some new campaigning methods as well as those that have worked well in the past. This requires money so all donations to this site, once the running costs are covered, will go to support the work of Salvo/ Liberation. I think you will see it well used and effective.

LIBERATION.SCOT

We are seeking to build Liberation.Scot to at least 100,000 signatures just as quickly as we can. This is part of our plan to win recognition as an official Liberation Movement via the United Nations. We intend to internationalise our battle to win Independence and through the setting up of our Scottish National Congress will prepare and develop our arguments to win progress in the International Courts. Please help by signing up at Liberation.Scot. It is from those who sign up to Liberation.Scot that the membership of the SNC will be created by ballot.