The SNP’s Latest Pyramid Scheme

Extract from the “How Scotland Decides How Scotland Recovers” “leaflet”.

Today’s National’s front page exclusive is that Mike Russell will update the SNP NEC on the creation of a “leaflet” entitled “How Scotland Decides How Scotland Recovers” which is available on the Yes.Scot website.

Let’s get one thing straight. Until it has been run off in print form it is not a “leaflet” and I suspect it never will be run off in any case. Even at that it’s still not that impressive, in fact the Scottish Independence Foundation (SIF) recently published their own booklet, Scotland & Independence, which is far more detailed and far more impressive – and is actually available right now on actual paper.

Rather than simply run a puff piece on a pdf file, The National could have asked a few probing and relevant questions which their readers might have been interested in.:

1. How many leaflets are being printed?
2. How are these leaflets going to find their way into every household in Scotland?
3. When will this exercise be complete?
4. How much will it cost to distribute these leaflets to every household in Scotland?
5. Where is the money coming from to carry this out?

Neither the article nor the Yes.scot website explain how these points are to be achieved – indeed the SNP’s preferred method of sharing is that we each share it to five people online, who share it to another five people, who share it to another five, in some kind of pyramid scheme., something which the SNP has already engaged in with its “ring-fenced” fundraiser and which has ultimately left them without the resources to put this meagre offering into paper form. The gullible will lap this up. As for those who are a tad more questioning, this appears to be an exercise in deception.

Unity in the Independence Movement Does Not Mean Blind Obedience to the SNP

Since the election in May I’ve seen much talk online regarding the Alba Party from SNP officials, members and supporters. Indeed, in the immediate wake of the election we saw the rather disgusting sight of senior SNP officials cheering at what they thought was the death of another wing of the independence movement. Since then we have heard the incessant drip, drip, drip from SNP fundamentalists demanding that people who voted Alba should now return to the fold and unite as one, abandoning their concerns and principles in the process. I’m afraid that ship has sailed and there’s as much chance of that happening as there is of the Yes movement heeding calls from British Nationalists to abandon independence because they won the referendum in 2014.

Gordon McIntyre Kemp hit the nail on the head in his column in The National on Thursday when he said that the SNP are highly successful as a political party but not as a part of the Yes movement. The unity of the 2014 campaign came from the atmosphere generated by the movement, the feeling that everyone had something to contribute and something to gain, and that although we all desired the same aim in one respect we were not of one hive mind.

Bearing that in mind, perhaps it is not the Yes movement which must surrender to the SNP, but the other way around. Many eyes have been opened to the internal chicanery of the SNP, and when you see that kind of behaviour laid bare and take a principled stand against it, then it is highly unlikely you can stuff that particular genie back in the bottle. The shadow of careerists, bottom-feeders and carpet-baggers, along with kangaroo courts, police investigations and missing “ring-fenced” money looms large and long, and perhaps in those circumstances the best we can hope for from the SNP is that it becomes more transparent and honest internally, while at the same time holding out an olive branch to the Yes movement and learning to work with its allies in the independence movement, not against them. Instead of running lemming-like towards a cliff the SNP must now pause and take stock or fall into the abyss. Should they do so they will take the independence movement with them, and that must not be allowed to happen.