2016 Holyrood Election Thread: polling, coverage, issues.

[DexterTCN]

Perhaps because a lot of SNP supporters think that because Bella isn't simply parroting SNP party lines, but actually discussing stuff, that they are therefore an anti-SNP pro-Labour cover.

Well done danny...you managed to get 'SNP' into your answer three times when they weren't part of the question. I talked about people not parties.

Your answer is political parties and affiliation, yeah?

 

[danny la rouge]

Well done danny...you managed to get 'SNP' into your answer three times when they weren't part of the question. I talked about people not parties.

Your answer is political parties and affiliation, yeah?

You're not very good at reading, are you?

 

[DexterTCN]

You're not very good at reading, are you?

I read SNP three times and Labour once.

I'm good at counting

Most of these sites (bella, wings, newsnet, bateman, malky, lallands, indyref, ponsonby, cs, dug, pop etc.) have had digs at each other....never along party lines though. Mostly about approach and tactics, sometimes other stuff.

 

[danny la rouge]

I'm good at counting .

But not nuance.

It's been a blast shooting the breeze, though.

 

[DexterTCN]

I've never considered you to be nuanced. I think I've quoted some of your nuanced posts in this thread, in fact. Your current level is totalitarianism, isn't it?

I'm talking about the sites involved in these things and funding and trends and reactions and the readers of those different, complex sites and how it shows what is happening in Scotland.

 

[Celyn]

At the moment, Bella Caledonia is amusing/annoying me as I wait to see how long it will take them to change to normal spelling.

We are committed to broadening our readership by inviting talented guest editors to take the reigns for a few days at a time. We need to keep fresh and keep challenging ourselves and our readers.

Grrr! Maybe that's deliberate and is intended to say "look how stressed we are, that we get really simple words wrong. Give money now", but I have no spare money just now, although I have a lot of grumpiness to spare.

 

[DexterTCN]

Yup...when nothing immediate is happening the money ebbs and coalesces.

And because a few years have passed...crowd-funding money is getting picky. Disparate doesn't do the job here. People don't have a lot of money. I don't have a breakdown of that, obviously.

 

[danny la rouge]

I've never considered you to be nuanced. I think I've quoted some of your nuanced posts in this thread, in fact. Your current level is totalitarianism, isn't it?

I'm talking about the sites involved in these things and funding and trends and reactions and the readers of those different, complex sites and how it shows what is happening in Scotland.

You have a habit of picking out one word then building your own story around it. That's not how reading comprehension works: the other words are there to do a job as well.

Since you bring up the word "totalitarian", here is the sentence in which it was employed:

2016 Holyrood Election Thread: polling, coverage, issues.


So, before you start making your own mythology around it, look at the context. You coming back with this bollocks time and time again is grating. If you really can't understand what's written, then fine. But I strongly suspect you can. Who your performance is for, I've no idea, because anyone else can just read the thread back to see what was actually written.

 

[DexterTCN]

Do you have anything to say about what's happening, what will happen in the future, in regards to these sites?

Up until the referendum it was easy, it was relatively easy up until the Scottish election too. Do some pro-indy articles, carry some interviews or dispute some unionist media releases and your coffers were filled.

 

[danny la rouge]

Do you have anything to say about what's happening, what will happen in the future, in regards to these sites?

Up until the referendum it was easy, it was relatively easy up until the Scottish election too. Do some pro-indy articles, carry some interviews or dispute some unionist media releases and your coffers were filled.

What's changed, in your opinion?

 

[DexterTCN]

That's your reply?

 

[danny la rouge]

That's your reply?

Surprisingly, though I do spend a lot of time on here, I do have other things going on.

I have a little time now to look at what "these sites" are.

You mention: bella, wings, newsnet, bateman, malky, lallands, indyref, ponsonby, cs, dug, pop etc.

Bella - I never really liked it, but I added them to my Feedly after the discussion here about their funding drive. I still don't like it. It's too nationalist for my tastes, and I don't find their content very interesting. I swipe past their articles in my feed.

Newsnet - I had no idea this was still operating. Haven't looked at it since before September 2014.

Bateman - I don't like his prose style, so never read him even before the referendum. He rambles and doesn't get to the point.

Malky? You mean Mr Malky, the Twitter guy with the dog in his profile? The first I knew he had a blog was when you posted it here the other day. It's a vanity blog like everyone else has. Surely he doesn't seek funding for it?

Lallands - I follow him on Twitter, and have his blog in my feedly. I read him when he posts, which hasn't been often lately. His insights into Scots legal matters are useful, and will no doubt continue to be so for as long as he has the inclination to blog them. His lecturing and journalism will continue to fund him, I imagine.

Indyref? I've no idea what that is beyond an acronym for the referendum.

PA Ponsonby - This guy is seriously unhinged. He's an embarrassment to the pro-independence movement.

CS - I read this on an almost daily basis. I think it has a broad enough range of content for it to continue.

Wee Ginger Dug - I read him in the National from time to time. I hardly ever look at his blog.

Pop - I take it you mean James Kelly, Scot Goes Pop? His analysis is embarrassingly poor.

So there's two blogs in your list that I use (Lallands Peat Worrier and Common Space), one of which seeks funding. I have chipped in. (Bella, I couldn't be arsed in the end).

Of the others that seek funding, I assume people will fund them if they find them useful. But if they're all competing for the same funders, then they might have a problem: the fact that the pro-independence movement isn't a unitary movement. Now that the referendum has come and gone, we find that many of us have little in common.

That was always there: if you read the independence thread back, you'll see my irritation at having to explain SNP policy I disagreed with to all-comers. (I thought the currency policy was a mistake, for example, and that the bulk of the white paper was the manifesto for a prospective post-independence SNP government rather than actually a roadmap for the process of setting up independence). Furthermore, I'm not a nationalist, so my support for independence is instrumental rather than anything else. Now that the indyref has been and gone, those differences are bound to be more visible.

What irritates many of us non-SNP folks is that some (note the word some) SNP supporters behave as if unless we support every SNP policy we are against independence. Indeed, some even put inverted commas round "Scottish" to describe people critical of SNP policy, like you're not even a proper Scot if you disagree. That's the kind of nationalism that makes me want to vomit. It's not all SNP supporters, but there's a voluble section who are like that. I can't imagine those people funding blogs they see as fake Scottish. My shorthand for those people is "The 45", not because they represent the 45% who voted Yes (one of whom is me), but because they think they do, and they think they have the right to decide what we should all do to achieve what they see as the goal. As I said when people started calling themselves "the 45", apart from anything else it's a stupid strategy to try to harden the population into the two referendum camps when yours is the smaller. (And despite the electoral success of the SNP, support for independence remains a minority). If any blog falls into that camp, it's of no interest to me.

So, that's my thoughts on these blogs and their future.