Jump to content

Sturgeon v Salmond


Yngwie

Recommended Posts

Because the SNP are set to get so many MSPs as constituency MSPs, they are unlikely to get a large number through the Regional lists.  If Salmond's party is only contesting the regional lists, then potentially they could secure a significant number of Regional seats leading to a large majority of pro-independence MSPs at Holyrood.  On the other hand, if only a relatively low level of SNP supporters switch to Alba, Alba may not get enough votes to secure more than a very low number, but they might take enough votes from the Greens to wipe them out and enough from the SNP to reduce their number of Regional seats.  The net effect of this might be to hand a majority to those opposed to independence.

The Holyrood electoral system was devised to prevent the situation we frequently get at Westminster where a party with a minority of the votes gets a majority of the seats.  No system is perfect though, and the current situation shows how a bit of tactical voting by a relatively small proportion of the electorate can radically change the composition of a Parliament designed to be more representative.

It's all very interesting, but I am not going to be foolish enough to predict what the outcome will be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Kingsmills said:

Assuming the SNP constituency vote is as the polls currently predict, they are unlikely to have more than one or two MSPs from the regional lists anyway.

Assuming this party, which was actually registered with the Electoral Commission back in January, and has effectively been taken over by AS, gains any sort of traction, the party which may be the most likely to lose out are the Greens.

The Greens losing out might well be the one thing that will encourage me to vote SNP  1st vote after all, whilst holding my nose firmly, seeing that Alba recommends that....and purely by dint of AS being the public face of it, it is likely to get more votes than either of the other list options....but I'll make up my mind about both my votes nearer the time.Only thing I'm certain about right now is that I wouldn't vote Green if you paid me.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is Salmond funding this new party, has anything been said to explain that?

Is he using some of the Scottish taxpayer’’s money that Sturgeon gave him, or might he use his Russian connections to get backing from  Putin, who presumably would love to see the UK being somewhat destabilised?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

How is Salmond funding this new party, has anything been said to explain that?

Is he using some of the Scottish taxpayer’’s money that Sturgeon gave him, or might he use his Russian connections to get backing from  Putin, who presumably would love to see the UK being somewhat destabilised?

These are reasonable questions, and they had occurred to me too.  Assuming that Scots law is the same as English law in this area, then if it is a genuine political party,  he would have to make public the sources of any large donations.   (Whereas Farage's last venture, whatever it was called, was formed as a company to avoid transparency.)

ICT link, BTW - Salmond was a frequent visitor to the Dunain Park Hotel just outside Sneck on the road to Loch Ness, when the proprietrix and wonderful chef was Ann Nicol, who was also then head of the ICT supporters' club.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Yngwie said:

How is Salmond funding this new party, has anything been said to explain that?

Is he using some of the Scottish taxpayer’’s money that Sturgeon gave him, or might he use his Russian connections to get backing from  Putin, who presumably would love to see the UK being somewhat destabilised?

As a matter of fact, none of the taxpayer's money went to AS. It all went directly to his various lawyers to pay about 90% of his legal expenses actually leaving him slightly out of pocket in that regard.

As far as The Alba Party is concerned, it was founded last Autumn by the TV producer, possibly now retired, Laurie Flynn and registered with the Electoral Commission back in November with minimal funding.

I imagine that it will now attract sufficient donations to fund an election campaign and, only running on the list, will avoid the considerable expense of funding individual constituency campaigns.

I imagine that most of the campaigning will consist of press conferences or press releases by AS which, given his profile, will gain wide coverage perhaps supplemented with a single run of leafletting.

Amusing how only about a third of Scottish based journalists and none of the London based media can pronounce the Gaelic word for Scotland.

Perhaps it should have been named The Caledonian Party or since AS seems so prickly, The Caledonian Thistle Party !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Kingsmills said:

As a matter of fact, none of the taxpayer's money went to AS. It all went directly to his various lawyers to pay about 90% of his legal expenses actually leaving him slightly out of pocket in that regard.

You will naturally know more about such things than me, but I had been under the impression that he had raised funds privately to cover his legal fees, then the eventual award of costs to him to cover his legal expenses then would have left him with a surplus?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Kingsmills said:

Amusing how only about a third of Scottish based journalists and none of the London based media can pronounce the Gaelic word for Scotland.

I may have misheard it, but I thought Salmond pronounced it wrong too in his broadcast. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Yngwie said:

Sturgeon today: “I know Alex Salmond very well. He makes big claims which often don't stand up to scrutiny."

It’s all coming out now, eh? No mention of this in 2014! 😀

A big difference in attitude  to Alex Salmond who has not resorted to personal abuse and has accepted the deliberations of both the committee and Hamilton without using them as an excuse to bad-mouth Nicola for her actions.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

True, he could easily have responded along the exact same lines as what she had said about his trial in a Covid briefing, ie just because he was cleared doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Leaving aside the matter of personalities, both, whatever you perceive their faults to be, are very shrewd politicians, probably the shrewdest in the country.

It will not have escaped the attention of either that two recent polls still give NS very high net approval ratings among the public whereas AS, by contrast, at the time of polling at least earlier in the month, had a strongly negative rating actually worse than either Douglas Ross or Boris Johnson which is quite an achievement in Scotland.

AS is far from daft, he will know from that that while, it might play well with s small minority of independence supporters and the majority of Unionists supportes to direct his fire at the, still popular current First Minister, that would prove toxic with the great majority of independence supporters which is the group that the Alex Party is trying to attract. AS is also well aware that an independence majority is entirely dependent on the SNP winning the very great bulk of the constituency seats and that doing or saying anything to undermine that is also undermining his own argument.

The SNP, on the other hand, probably see electoral merit in focussing on the personality and motives of an individual who is very clearly revered by some but disliked and distrusted by very many more.

Whatever the political leanings of the parties concerned, political life becomes very fractious during elections campaigns and the internecine battles are always the most cynically and brutally fought.

Just as an aside, I wonder why Angus Macneil is taking so long to announce that he will be joining the Alex Party ?

Edited by Kingsmills
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Kingsmills said:

Leaving aside the matter of personalities, both, whatever you perceive their faults to be, are very shrewd politicians, probably the shrewdest in the country.

It will not have escaped the attention of either that two recent polls still give NS very high net approval ratings among the public whereas AS, by contrast, at the time of polling at least earlier in the month, had a strongly negative rating actually worse than either Douglas Ross or Boris Johnson which is quite an achievement in Scotland.

AS is far from daft, he will know from that that while, it might play well with s small minority of independence supporters and the majority of Unionists supportes to direct his fire at the, still popular current First Minister, that would prove toxic with the great majority of independence supporters which is the group that the Alex Party is trying to attract. AS is also well aware that an independence majority is entirely dependent on the SNP winning the very great bulk of the constituency seats and that doing or saying anything to undermine that is also undermining his own argument.

The SNP, on the other hand, probably see electoral merit in focussing on the personality and motives of an individual who is very clearly revered by some but disliked and distrusted by very many more.

Whatever the political leanings of the parties concerned, political life becomes very fractious during elections campaigns and the internecine battles are always the most cynically and brutally fought.

Just as an aside, I wonder why Angus Macneil is taking so long to announce that he will be joining the Alex Party ?

I can see what you are saying, Kingsmills..but by the same token - a lot of us pro-indy people, while maybe not being keen on Alex Salmond, as I am not....see Nicola as the toxic one...and much of that opinion is based on the way she has bad-mouthed him...just because she has the public platform to do it. How come he has been "a man behaving badly" all the time she was deputy FM, but she never noticed or heard any rumours?  Sure the SNP currently is the only political party in a position to do anything about independence, and has been for seven years now, but to date has done little more about it than putting it every election manifesto since 2014..and then sitting on their hands.... bar the ridiculous  "Growth Commission" report, which reads as if it was their brains they were sitting on at that time.

As you say Alex Salmond is not daft and realises that the SNP is the only game in town, and could get a majority on constituency votes alone - hence the call for Alba members like me to vote SNP1 Alba2 (and I'm thinking of buying a clothes peg for my nose to make my constituency vote)..but it rather looks as if Nicola'd rather be held to ransom by the Greens to get the GRA done and dusted than be held to ransom by Salmond to make some real effort to get independence. Me...I'm hoping that, even if Alba don't get a lot of list seats this time, that  they get enough to make an  impact and form an opposition who will actually oppose the SNP in the next parliamentary term, while preparing to challenge the SNP for the consituency vote in the following election.  And before you say that would split the vote and let unionists in...I'd rather that, after 52 years voting and working for independence, than live in a Scotland  made by the SNP and Greens to suit their joint gender identity ideology. 

Maybe Nicola might get less votes in May, if she decided to scrap the computer/tablet freebie for children in Scotland and put that money to better use by making gender re-alignment easier to access....and telling cross-dressers that if they don't want to have the operation, then they are not women with penises but men with problems and stopping any idea of allowing them to usurp the women's spaces, jobs and rights that generations of women fought hard to get.

Re Angus MacNeil...who knows...but there's a couple of days yet before list candidates have to be nominated, isn't there? .

Edited by Oddquine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We need to work to make the parliament more diverse and more reflective of society.

So credit to the Alex Party, the semi literate, racist, vaccine sceptical, former bover section of society had hitherto had a very limited presence at Holyrood.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Kingsmills said:

We need to work to make the parliament more diverse and more reflective of society.

So credit to the Alex Party, the semi literate, racist, vaccine sceptical, former bover section of society had hitherto had a very limited presence at Holyrood.

Cheers for the abuse, Kingsmills. I've never considered myself semi-literate, as I got 6 highers in the days when Scottish Education was considered very good, racist, unless you think criticism of the Israeli Government is racist, vaccine sceptical, as I had my first dose a while ago, and, as far as I can see, the former bover section of society has more than enough representation in the form of trans activists, people shouting SNP1 & 2,  people who think Nicola walks on water and continually abuse those of us who don't.....and unionists. 

But, hey, if you don't mind being dead, as it looks as if I will, before Nicola gets round to doing something about another referendum, if you have no problem with cross-dressers, (because that is all men who self-id as women but won't have reassignment surgery are), usurping the rights of women because the Greens and SNP have decided to redefine sex/gender/ biology and if you are happy to remain perfectly PC and watch what you say in private, just to be on the safe side of the Hate Speech Bill, that's your choice. But it's not my choice....sorry.    

Edited by Oddquine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Oddquine said:

Cheers for the abuse, Kingsmills. I've never considered myself semi-literate, as I got 6 highers in the days when Scottish Education was considered very good, racist, unless you think criticism of the Israeli Government is racist, vaccine sceptical, as I had my first dose a while ago, and, as far as I can see, the former bover section of society has more than enough representation in the form of trans activists, people shouting SNP1 & 2,  people who think Nicola walks on water and continually abuse those of us who don't.....and unionists. 

But, hey, if you don't mind being dead, as it looks as if I will, before Nicola gets round to doing something about another referendum, if you have no problem with cross-dressers, (because that is all men who self-id as women but won't have reassignment surgery are), usurping the rights of women because the Greens and SNP have decided to redefine sex/gender/ biology and if you are happy to remain perfectly PC and watch what you say in private, just to be on the safe side of the Hate Speech Bill, that's your choice. But it's not my choice....sorry.    

Whilst I disagree with much, although far from all, that you say, I have never done so in a disrespectful manner.

However, I would be interested to learn what on earth leads you to believe that a comment so clearly directed at the disgraceful and recent social media postings of Alex Arthur can, in any way, be taken as an attack on you or indeed anyone other than the former World boxing champion ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Kingsmills said:

Whilst I disagree with much, although far from all, that you say, I have never done so in a disrespectful manner.

However, I would be interested to learn what on earth leads you to believe that a comment so clearly directed at the disgraceful and recent social media postings of Alex Arthur can, in any way, be taken as an attack on you or indeed anyone other than the former World boxing champion ?

Possibly because you didn't mention Alex Arthur, and Alba is being called the Alex Party on FB....but I'd likely have replied in much the same vein even if you had, because I'm not really into blanket abusing everybody for the actions of one person.   

It does just go to show how easily offence can be taken online though, doesn't it?  I suspect the police are going to have their work cut out coping with the volume of the "abused/offended" who claim they have been subjected to hate crime/heard someone in their living room being non-PC/was offended by reading a non-PC post on FB.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Oddquine said:

Possibly because you didn't mention Alex Arthur, and Alba is being called the Alex Party on FB....but I'd likely have replied in much the same vein even if you had, because I'm not really into blanket abusing everybody for the actions of one person.   

It does just go to show how easily offence can be taken online though, doesn't it?  I suspect the police are going to have their work cut out coping with the volume of the "abused/offended" who claim they have been subjected to hate crime/heard someone in their living room being non-PC/was offended by reading a non-PC post on FB.  

I am a complete stranger to Facebook  Twitter and any other social media unless Caleythistleonline counts as such.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. : Terms of Use : Guidelines : Privacy Policy