Union mandate !

3 Unionist parties 1 364 656
2 Nat parties 1 326 194

That is not a ref2 mandate, that is a Union mandate! Unionism won the popular vote. Our voting system of Additional Member may be PR but it's still not 1-2-3- preferential. Split votes on the same side can't be undone by the voters' second preferences. Hence, the side that is more split across parties can win the popular vote yet lose the election in seats.

Sturgeon of course knows those numbers. As popular vote, direct number of votes, determines a ref, we know quite safely tnat she does not want one now. Neither side can afford to risk one, as it does not take professorship for John Curtice to tell us. Sturgeon can't hold the SNP together without a nominal show of confrontation for one, but has just kicked safely imto next year any parliamentary action on it. Most of her followers understand that first she will try to whip up more support by grievancemongering, and see if they can climb out of thus 50-50 divide of the voters.

The Alba Party's failure suggests that nat voters are mostly on their movement's cautious side, not the emotionally raving militants' side. They are not bursting to force a ref2 when they know its result would be a complete gamble. This election was the first time that has been actually tested, between 2 nat parties with different views on speed of action.

Notable that Tommy Sheridan, who since 2017 has made speeches at indy rallies demandihg that ref2 be called unilaterally, joined the Alba Party.

Curious that both the Alba Party, and its Unionist counterpart George Galloway's All For Unity Party, both led apparently from the left, both chose to blow it with progresssive voters in the same socially reactionary way! Both supported the anti-transgender reaction against the self-identification law. Alba did it in a trans-excluding feminist way, you could find it on Youtube, women demanding a biological reality definition of women. All For Unity did it by arguing a family values line like the 1990s Major government, you could find it on its own site and Facebook, including a nasty sinister oppressive line for parents to have power to decide what to allow their kids to know. There was leafers' hubris in doing that. For Salmond, a recent survivor of the unjust witch'hunting of men, it ws surprising and seems illogical to side with the angrier more excluding type of feminism! Exactly the type that sides with the witch-hunting more fervently.

Labour comes out of the election best. Quite unlike the concerns of an unsure position that afflicted it in the Corbyn period, Labour stood on a definite manifesto line against a ref in this term of govt, and held its candidates to that line, with strong pre-election purging of candidates who haf aberrated from it.

opinion polls conducted like this are garbage

What does this experience of an Ipsos Mori politics phone poll say for the credence of all their politics polls? Polls whose demographic is only the folks whò will passively take pushing around by the caller including arrogant ignorement of being short of time, are obviously not a true demographic of society. This caller ended the call and called me hostile just because I said “okay OKAY” to stop him giving a long winded repetitive spiel about the poll instead of keeping to the questions, ignoring that I had said at start I was relatively short of time.

Ipsos Mori’s Scottish politics poll called me at 17:50 on Oct 7, and by fluke, caught me in shortly before going out for the evening, and shortly before becoming older than the 16 to 54 age range they were polling. I have complained to Ipsos Mori that I was treated completely illogically + penalised for its caller’s own miscommunication, which does not make an honest poll, it makes a corrupt wrong poll.

First he seemed to say that the call was recorded, though later he said he could not listen to any recording. If there is a recording, I waive any confidentiality needed to allow investigators to listen to it, to hear how he conducted it.

As written to Ipsos Mori – When he asked me the most important issue in Scottish politics, he was stuck to categorise my answer, put it under “other” then said, how would I express it? Yet I had already given an answer, so what was he asking for now? You want me to think of a precis of my answer? No, he was asking me for the same answer again, for no reason ever explained, + when I tried to refer him back to the answer already given, that was when he said he had no recording. So I gave the answer again, then seemingly as a thanks for it he went straight off into a very long-winded spiel about the poll’s purpose. But this is after, at start I had said I did not have much time, soon to go out, + he had promised the call would only take 10 minutes! But now he was going round in circles, insistently reciting at least 3 different angles of spiel on the same thing, instead of continuing the questions.

So perfectly logically, to try to stop him + express time urgency, at a pause for response moment I said “okay OKAY!” Instantly he accused me of being hostile to him, + suggested that he should end the call. I said I was simply trying to prevent wasted time, + he ignored this, + in more long-winded recital he stuck to the charge of hostility, while “I’ve been perfectly courteous to you”, + asserted that he was ending the call.

To instantly start calling you hostile as soon as you have any collision at all, is a notorious unfair device used in modern corporate bullying, in business + by officials. It is a discrimination against standing up for yourself, an approach that only takes submission as amicable. No opinion poll conducted with that practice is fit. To suffer a termination of call so intemperately + not-listeningly of course creates hostility from that experience: in that way it is self-fulilling. It is also corporate bullying to declare yourself courteous when you have plainly not been. It is discourteous, very rude, to ignore the person’s statement of being relatively short of time, + despite it, insistently keep speaking to them in long-winded recitals of repetitive spiels about the poll instead of get on with the questions. Then it is discourteous to take as hostility a resulting “okay OKAY!” prod to return to the questions, and discourteous not to listen or budge to getting told that the called person wanted to save time. it is unfair polling as well as discourteous, to actually end a call for these things.

Polls confined to folks who passively accept unnecessary long-windedness even when they have limited time, + ignorement of them saying so, are not of a real demographic. All your polls stand invalid unless you say how handling calls like that is prevented + not allowed to happen.

term time

Green leader Patrick Harvie to wrote a column in yesterday's National, accepting as routine and uncontroversial across all oarties the bill to put off the 2020 Scottish election to 2021. He writes that he anticipates our electoral term becoming 5 years from now on to fit with the British and European terms and avoid clashes.

What's so wrong with clashes then? What is wrong with simply having an election at some other date than May when you want to avoid a clash? What, only since 1997, is suddenly so magic about May for elections?

Why the hell do the Greens, on the whole the most reformist party, want to go along with a consensus to make elections less frequent? How does that help reform anything?

Why would they, or indeed a nationalist government, want to change for worse Scotland's election cycle to acommodate Britain's, when there is no need to? Especially when there is much discontent by British-level political journalists that the term is too long. This 5 year term, this reduction in elections now presented as permanent, originated entirely from the party interests only for the 2010 parliament in making a right wing coalition deal of despised memory!

It rather looks like the Greens have succumbed to temptation to accept the gravy train giving them a free ride of holding their seats for the extra year, between having to see how they as small party perform in elections.