Monday 4 October 2021

Rockall imperialism

No momentum or much news is happening now, indywise. It's all flagging. The Herald was right to report, to the Believe in Scotland site's rage, that Yes's recent day of action was a flop, as 1000 of them taking part from 120 local groups is less than 10 in each place. Huddled groups chatting to the folks already well disposed towards them.

Meanwhile the polls are comfortably unionist again. The nat poll surge in the earlier Covid period, when the blame for wobbles around shutdowns and reopenings hit the British govt first, is long over. It already was before the election, as Scottish govt showed it had no cleverer ways to cope and was drawn to follow mostly the same as what British did, with mostly the same swings in and out of shutdowns caused by the same forces.

The National is full of pieces fighting within the Yes movement, over its loss of all momentum feeling and its split on gradualism. The writers and their fragmented grassroots know the picture is desultory.

So to show keeping up effort with their arguments, this Believe in Scotland, the latest brand name for their side, has flyered homes. 2 flyers arrived at my home today, on pensions and on a set of economic stats about us.

Those included: "32% of the UK's landmass and 62% of the offshore maritime area", illustrated by a map. 62% ? That we have the actual majority of maritime area ? What ?

The map has, sticking out of our coastal waters, a long horn of supposed maritime area protruding out to the northwest, just into the open sea. What justifies that ? What is supposed to make it our maritime area ? Simply ROCKALL ! Ain't that ridiculous ? A little rock you can't even land on gives us a great sticky-out extra maritime area to tip the stat, to let us claim the biggest ? A misleading creative stat that is just a ptake, and a nat piece of map-grabbing imperialism: innit !