REPLYING TO #COSYSLIPPERSPETE

Pete’s promised a devastating attack on Alex Salmond and the Alba Party. It was so good I have reproduced most of it here as a special treat for him opening it up to a much bigger audience that his blog normally attracts. Oh and I have added in bold some observations on his content.

‘Just pronounce the bloody name properly……’ was my first reaction to the chaotic launch of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party. I could just about forgive the multiple technical difficulties, the questions we couldn’t hear and the awkward empty silences, but getting the Gaelic name of our nation wrong, particularly when you had just appropriated it? Come on….

Finger on the pulse Pete, another pro Indy Party emerges on the scene. Experienced Pete quickly narrows down to the key danger. How the name is pronounced! There is no fooling you Pete, a lot of folk might have missed that.

But the moment when I knew this enterprise was doomed from the very start was when the words ‘we now go over to the blogger community’ was uttered, and up appeared the ominous silent presence of Wings Over Scotland’s, Stuart Campbell. From that point on I knew that no credibility could be bestowed on this mission and nothing could be done to make this a popular exercise that would in any way chime with the general public. In the course of the past couple of weeks Alba has not so much risen like the phoenix but fizzled out like a haphazard Catherine wheel at a firework show that no one wanted to go to.

Once again Pete can see by the evidence, Wings gets well over 1 million views a month but Pete has the uncanny ability to rule this out as irrelevant as a mere million views is not “chiming with the General public” No said Cosy Slippers clutching to his tiny fraction of that readership, he is in tune with the public mood, nobody else. Delusional or what?

Here was Alex, back and unrepentant talking about a ‘super majority’ just like the good old days. You could almost just about believe it. The references to romantic nationalism were designed to stir the loins and imagined claymores were being picked up to do gory battle on every regional list in Scotland. 

The thing with a new independence party is that only Alex could give this enterprise any sense of credibility, whilst at the same time, only Alex could ensure that it was doomed from the very start. 

Says the man who contested election after election under his leadership. How times change. I just want Alex to know being responsible for Cosy Slippers election all those years ago, while a blot on his record, is now others responsibility.

His decades of leadership, his singular efforts at the last referendum, his chutzpah and political skills made him the only possible candidate for the job. But negative ratings worse than Boris Johnson’s and a failure to acknowledge his many failings brought up in his trial meant only he could ensure it would go absolutely nowhere. 

How blithely he ignores the responsibility of many in the SNP for that reputational damage,, those senior SNP figures amongst the alphabet women, his own leader’s cowardly and incessant smearing whilst hiding behind a ban on him being given the opportunity of reply OR defend in the TV debates. Judge Pete puts himself above a Scottish jury. Judge Pete knows best

And this ‘super majority’ is a typically brilliant Alex concept. I mean who wouldn’t want a majority that was ‘super’? Ending ‘wasted’ list votes and the promise of claiming unionist scalps? What’s not to like about that? Only, of course, it is absolute bollocks. Unable to define what a ‘super majority’ actually means it has come across as a ‘vote for Alex’ vendetta. This doesn’t have the look of a great political breakthrough but has all the hallmarks of a tired and much diminished political figure wanting his ego fed with a dish of revenge, served cold. 

He asks the question about who wouldn’t want a supermajority but omits to mention that his leader Nicola Sturgeon has made very clear she doesn’t. Be careful Pete she won’t be happy about you questioning her sanity? The latter part of this paragraph was delivered by Pete on his knees praying that for once he is calling the election correctly. Few would rate Pete’s forecasting ability but I will happily take a bet from him if he truly believes Alba will not win any seats. How about a £1000 quid Pete, sound good to you?

Now I have cut out a couple of paragraphs from Pete’s original because it is meaningless waffle which if I am honest sounds stupid enough without me adding any ridicule.

But there are other things wrong with Alba that is deeply troubling and that brings us back to our friends the ‘bloggers’. These people have been brought in to spread the message and to provide the intellectual and ideological heft to Alba’s appeal. Alex is used to being interviewed at election time by Paxman, Neil and Marr, now he is being interviewed by ‘Jeggit’ and ‘Barrhead Boy’. It is the damage that is done to the credibility of the whole movement by exposing the worst excesses of ‘Yes’ Twitter on to the general population. It is their innate ability to put people off the whole idea of independence that is being unleashed beyond the realms of where it can be safely contained.

What a political snob Pete is. Barrhead Boy or Jeggit know more about Scottish politics than his three Brit heroes added together. What’s more they are firmly behind Scotland’s bid for Independence, rather than enriching themselves by being on the Brit payroll of the BBC. You can see why we all treat Cosy Slippers as a lightweight, a tamed serf of the British Establishment. In awe of these people. You seem to lack the radical spirit Pete to win through for Scotland. You have been tamed if there was any fighting spirit there in the first place. You have become the House Jock.

The bloggers and their followers are also full on ‘raging against the woke’ social conservatives and their obsessions have to be satisfied. So it’s straight to ‘women’s rights’ and a full assault on the ‘hated’ GRA, progressive equality policies and anything designed to make the lives of trans people just that little bit more tolerable. 

Inevitably we were left with the appalling and absurd contention that the Scottish Government supports the idea of lowering the age of consent to 10 years old with the associated smears that the LGBT+ community is aligned to underage sex and paedophilia. The creation and propagation of the ‘predator’ is a trope as old as the hills but here was Alba heading down that rabbit hole within a political minute of it being formed. We now eagerly await the policy announcements on defence, foreign policy and the economy, with baited breath

Here we have the loyal blind Pete, who never questions why the Hate Crime Bill or GRA never ever got aired at an SNP conference, that were never approved by a SNP Conference. Pete there is a reason for this, neither would have had any prospect of success at Conference. They would have been rejected. Nicola knew that, clearly you didn’t. What does that tell you? It tells me the SNP have abandoned Women’s Rights in favour of a tiny, vocal, vicious minority. It is hugely irresponsible Pete and it will cost you a lot of votes

I have always believed that another party would come along to accommodate those in the SNP unhappy at progress towards independence and determined to pursue an agenda around their own social conservative values. It has now arrived and we will soon see just how much of a public appetite there is for plebiscites, UDIs combined with a ‘war on woke’. Currently Alba is on about 2 to 3% in the opinion polls and heading not so much for a ‘super majority’ but for zero MSPs. In forming they might even have done the SNP a favour in helping to clear out those who have done nothing other than criticise and depress the party with endless cynicism and negativity from within. They can now knock themselves out with dreams about ‘negotiating independence within a week’ whilst we get on with securing that referendum, winning it and seeing our nation emerge as an independent country. 

Alba is soon going to find that the real world is significantly different to the weird alternative reality  found on the Twitter accounts of their house bloggers. What they will find is that the general public like and approve of the SNP, and trust us to lead our nation to independence. 

Pete when I joined the SNP in 1986, they were at 12% in the polls, with 2 MP’s, very few councillors and a membership not a million miles from where ALBA is today. They had been going for over FIFTY YEARS! ALBA has been in existence just over two weeks, it already has more members than the Lib Dems, more elected councillors than the Greens, twice the Westminster representation of Scottish Labour and I am sure they will be represented in Holyrood after the 6th May. I suspect, if you were honest you would think that as well. If you don’t I am sure you will want to take me up on my bet offer. We can do it secretly if you don’t want Nicola to know.

Finally Pete, your opponents reprinting your “devastating attack on Alex and the Alba Party” on their own blog pages maybe suggests it might not have been the devastating attack you thought it was. What do we know eh?

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

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